| Middle Norwegian | |
|---|---|
| nornskt mál[1] | |
| Region | Kingdom of Norway (872–1397),Kalmar Union,Denmark–Norway |
| Era | 14th–16th century |
Indo-European
| |
Early forms | |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
Middle Norwegian (Norwegian Bokmål:mellomnorsk;Norwegian Nynorsk:mellomnorsk,millomnorsk) is a form of theNorwegian language that was spoken from 1350 up to 1550 and was the last phase of Norwegian in its original state, beforeDanish replaced Norwegian as the official written language inNorway.
TheBlack Death came to Norway in 1349, killing over 60% of the population.[2] This significantly affected the development of Norwegian down the line.[3]
The language in Norway after 1350 until about 1550 is generally referred to as Middle Norwegian. During this period the language went through several changes: morphological paradigms were simplified, including the loss ofgrammatical cases and the levelling of personal inflection on verbs. Anepenthetic "e" gradually appeared before the nominative-r ending from Old Norse to ease pronunciation. This made terms such ashestr change tohester.[4] The -r disappeared from the language altogether, and so did the epenthetic in most dialects, but some still retain this vowel.[5] Avowel reduction also took place, in some dialects, including in parts of Norway, reducing many final unstressed vowels in a word to a common "e".
Thephonemic inventory also underwent changes. Thedental fricatives, represented by the lettersþ andð, disappeared from Norwegian, either by merging with their equivalentstop consonants, represented byt andd, respectively, or by being lost altogether.[citation needed]
During the 15th century, Middle Norwegian gradually ceased to be used as a written language. At the end of the 16th century,Christian IV of Denmark-Norway (1577–1648) decided to revise and translateMagnus VI of Norway's 13th centuryLandslov "Country Law" intoDanish, since it was originally written inOld West Norse. In 1604, the revised version of the law was introduced. The translation of this law marks the final transition to Danish as the administrative language in Norway.[6]
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