Scandinavian language
dialects of the North Germanic language group1

What is Norwegian?
When Einar Haugen listed his ecological questions about a language, hewas thinking about “Norwegian”, but he wasn’t even sure how to define“Norwegian”, because Norwegians had several different ways ofspeaking, and Norway even had two official written languages. Also,
Haugen knew that the “Norwegian” he heard in the USA was different
from the “Norwegian” he heard in Norway; and yet he could easily
communicate with various types of Norwegians, as well as with Danesand with others in Scandinavia.
To understand this situation, let’s begin, as Haugen did, by considering
the history of the Norwegian dialects. Where did they come from?
(1) What is the historical linguistic description of the language? How is
it diachronically related to other languages?
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the North Germanic language history
Today’s North Germanic dialects are descendent
from Old Norse. The map shows the two Old
Norse dialect areas, as well as other Germanic
dialect areas of the early 10th century:
Old West Norse dialect
Old East Norse dialect
Old Gutnish
Old English
Crimean Gothic
Other Germanic languages (somewhat mutuallyintelligible with Old Norse)
The Old West Norse dialect was also spoken inGreenland.
3current Scandinavian dialectsThese 18 Scandinavian
dialects, spoken in 5
European countries,
form a dialect continuumof mutual intelligibility.
Elfdalian is sometimes considereda West Scandinavian dialect.
In general, the East Scandinavian
dialects are spoken in Denmarkand Sweden, and the otherdialects are spoken in Norway,
Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.
4insular vs. mainland
Although the dialects have been historicallydivided between East and West, it is now
also common to divide the insular dialects,
Icelandic and Faroese, from the mainland
dialects, because the dialects in Norway havebeen assimilating to the East Scandinavian
dialects.
Icelandic is the modern dialect closest to Old
Norse, and Faroese is similarly close. Although
they can understand each other’s etymologicalwriting, mutual intelligibility of speech is difficult.
The mainland dialects are less conservative, and they have assimilated to the Danish standard.
5Danish standardization
In 1550, The publication of the Danish Bible ofChristian III became the orthographic standard forpeople in Denmark.
In modern times, the writing of philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard, fairy tale author Hans ChristianAndersen, and playwrights Henrik Ibsen and Ludvig
Holberg provided further models for written Danish.
The urban usage of Sjælland is today’s standard forDanish.
6contemporary standard Swedish: nusvenska(1536, 1541) Shortly after becoming independent from Denmark, the Gustav
Vasa Bible established a distinct written Swedish.
(late 1800s) Writing became more like colloquial speech.
(1906) Spelling was reformed.
(1960s) The use of du was encouraged. Urbanization increased standard usage.
The Swedish Language Council (Språkrådet) regulates standard Swedish
usage in Sweden. Nusvenska is contemporary standard Swedish.
(2009) Swedish was declared Sweden’s primary official language.
About 200 languages are spoken in Sweden today, and the people areincreasingly speaking English. The government policy is to protect andpromote the use of Swedish and five minority national languages.
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dual national languages for Norway(1814) Norwegian independence sparked a desire for a national language for Norway, distinct from Denmark’s.
(1836) Ivar Aasen made a national language proposal, drawn from pan-Norway colloquial speech, and he then began to write in thisstandardized language, eventually called Landsmål.
Knud Knudsen, who was involved in the national theatre of Norway, promoted a different national language, more similar toeducated urban speech, eventually known as Riksmål.
(1862) Spelling reform, promoted by Knudsen, better reflected pronunciation, but also respected a Riksmål standard.
(1885) Both Riksmål and Landsmål were declared official languages of Norway.
(1929) Riksmål and Landsmål were officially renamed Bokmål and Nynorsk (“new Norwegian”), respectively. The government had tried
to merge the two languages into a single standard, called Samnorsk. That resulted in their divergence from the original versions, whichwere then revived by some Norwegians as Riksmål and Høgnorsk (High Norwegian).
(1938, 1959) Further reforms toward a single Samnorsk standard brought Nynorsk and Bokmål closer than ever, but still not together.
Today, when writing Nynorsk, there is some spelling variation, because the spelling reflects the regional pronunciation.
Today, although the spelling of words in Bokmål is standardized, there is no standard pronunciation when reading those words aloud.
8Norway fails to create a single national language
Unlike Denmark and Sweden, Norway could not create a single
standard national language for itself.
“For the past century Norway has made a conscious effort to unify
her two nationally recognized languages, Riksmål and Landsmål. In
the first comprehensive account of Norway’s linguistic reform
program, Einar Haugen […] describes the sharp socio-politicalconflict between adherents of the two languages, the linguisticchanges attempted to date, and the establishment of the NorwegianLanguage Commission.”
Perhaps because of the similarities of Danish, Bokmål, and Nynorsk,
there was insufficient incentive to change the status quo.
9comparing Danish, Bokmål, and Nynorsk[Danish] I 1877 forlod Brandes København og bosatte sig i Berlin. Hans politiske synspunkter gjorde dog, at
Preussen blev ubehagelig for ham at opholde sig i, og han vendte i 1883 tilbage til København, hvor han blev
mødt af en helt ny gruppe af forfattere og tænkere, der var ivrige efter at modtage ham som deres leder.
[Norwegian Bokmål] I 1877 forlot Brandes København og bosatte seg i Berlin. Hans politiske synspunkter
gjorde imidlertid at det ble ubehagelig for ham å oppholde seg i Preussen, og i 1883 vendte han tilbake til
København, der han ble møtt av en helt ny gruppe forfattere og tenkere, som var ivrige etter å motta ham somsin leder.
[Norwegian Nynorsk] I 1877 forlét Brandes København og busette seg i Berlin. Då dei politiske synspunkta
hans gjorde det utriveleg for han å opphalda seg i Preussen, vende han attende til København i 1883. Der vart
han møtt av ei heilt ny gruppe forfattarar og tenkjarar som var ivrige etter å ha han som leiar.
[English translation] In 1877 Brandes left Copenhagen and took up residence in Berlin. However, his politicalviews made Prussia an uncomfortable place in which to live and in 1883 he returned to Copenhagen. There hewas met by a completely new group of writers and thinkers who were eager to accept him as their leader.
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A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
Norwegian Bokmål and Danish are very similar.
Max Weinreich popularized this expression:
A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
This is certainly true of Scandinavia. Very similar
dialects are spoken in Denmark and Sweden, but
we recognize two languages, Danish and Swedish,not for linguistic reasons, but for political reasons:Denmark and Sweden have armies and navies.

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Whose dialect should be “Norwegian”?
In 1814, the Royal Norwegian Navy was established. On
international maps, Norway was given a color different fromDenmark and Sweden. Norway flew its own flag. Even so, theNorwegian government could not agree on a single nationallanguage.
There were too many social and political groups within Norway
who were arguing about what kind of language “Norwegian”
should be. Some groups wanted the written standard to be similar
to local usage. Other groups wanted the written standard to reflectlearnèd usage. Different dialects were spoken in major cities:
Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim. Disputes continue even today.
12pan-dialectal solidarity
Founded in 1952, the Nordic Council (an official body
representating Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden,
the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and the Åland Islands) sometimes
refers to skandinaviska (“the Scandinavian language”) as the"{{lang-no}}"language of all Scandinavia.
The Nordic Council website is published in English, Finnish"{{lang-nb}}"(Suomi), and four national Scandinavian dialects: Dansk,Islenska, Svenska, and Norsk. They use the ambiguous code“no” for Norsk (which is the most popular internet coding
option for Norwegian), rather than “nb” for Bokmål or “nn” forNynorsk.
13"{{lang-nn}}"asymmetrical intelligibility
Norwegians are generally better than other
Scandinavians at understanding various dialects,
although the Faroese speakers are even better atunderstanding the mainland dialects.
The Swedes of Stockholm and the Danes of Copenhagen
are the worst at understanding the dialects of other
Scandinavians.
Perhaps because the Norwegians have grown up withthe weakest standard language tradition, they have had
more practice trying to understand different
Scandinavian dialects within their own country.
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hard questions to answer
Having considered this brief history of Scandinavian, how easy do you think it would be to answer some of Haugen’s
other questions?
(2) Who uses the language? What is its linguistic demography? What are the human geographic dimensions of thisusage? In which places, among which groups, with which religious practices, by which socioeconomic classes, inwhich professions, etc. is this language used?
(3) What are the sociolinguistic domains of usage which limit or restrict its usage in certain ways?
(4) What other languages are concurrently used by its users? What is the multilingual nature of its users?
(5) What internal variation does the language show? What is the range of dialectal and sociolectal variation?
(6) Is the language written? and what is the nature of its written tradition?
(7) To what degree has the language, especially its writing, been standardized? unified? codified?
(8) What sort of language policy support does the language have from governments, schools, or other public orprivate institutions?
(9) In terms of intimacy or status, what are the attitudes of its users which characterize personal identification?
These are some the key questions that one must answer to understand the language ecology of Scandinavian ingeneral, and of Norwegian in particular; or to understand the language ecology of any area.
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next week: South Slavic

Next week, we will consider theSouth Slavic language situation.

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