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Norwegian alphabet

Norwegian speaker reciting the alphabet in Norwegian

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Norwegian orthography is the method of writing theNorwegian language, of which there are two written standards:Bokmål andNynorsk. While Bokmål has for the most part derived its forms from the written Danish language andDanish-Norwegian speech, Nynorsk gets its word forms fromAasen's reconstructed "base dialect", which is intended to represent the distinctive dialectal forms. Both standards use a 29-letter variant of theLatin alphabet and the same orthographic principles.

TheNorwegian alphabet is based upon theLatin alphabet and is identical to theDanish alphabet. Since 1917 it has consisted of the following 29 letters.

The lettersc,q,w,x andz are not used in the spelling of native Norwegian words. They are rarely used;loanwords routinely have their orthography adapted to the native sound system.

Norwegian (especially theNynorsk variant) also uses several letters withdiacritic signs:é,è,ê,ó,ò,ô andù. The diacritic signs are not compulsory,^[1] but can be added to clarify the meaning of words (homonyms) which otherwise would be identical. One example isein gut ("a boy") versuséin gut ("one boy"), in Nynorsk, anden gutt ("a boy") versusén gutt ("one boy") in Bokmål. Diacritics are obligatory in foreign proper names that use them, likeRhône,Liège,Linné,München. In other loanwords diacritics are optional, likecrème fraîche,tête-à-tête. If the loanword has been adapted for Norwegian use, diacritics that were there originally should not be included, as inampere,bohem,opera.^[1] Note the lettersæ,ø andå never take diacritics.

The diacritic signs in use include theacute accent,grave accent and thecircumflex. A common example of how the diacritics change the meaning of a word can be seen with the wordfor:

• for (preposition. "for", "to", Bokmål and Nynorsk)
• fór (verb. "went", in the sense "went quickly", Bokmål and Nynorsk)
• fòr (noun. "furrow", Nynorsk only)
• fôr (noun. "fodder", "feed", Bokmål and Nynorsk)

ò can be used inòg, meaning "also". This word is found in bothNynorsk andBokmål. An example ofê in Nynorsk isvêr, meaning "weather".

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(July 2014)

• Vowel length can usually be deduced from the spelling based on the rule that short vowels are followed by two or more consonant letters, while long vowels are followed by at most one consonant letter. There are, however, certain exceptions to this rule where vowel length must be memorised.
• In those cases where the same letter can represent two different vowel qualities, the first given vowel is by far predominant (for example, short⟨o⟩ is usually/ɔ/, long⟨o⟩ is usually/uː/). Words where the other vowel quality occurs should, again, be memorised as exceptions.

The letterÅ (HTMLå) was officially introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacingAa oraa. The new letter came from theSwedish alphabet, where it had been in official use since the 18th century. The formerdigraphAa still occurs in personal names. Geographical names tend to follow the current orthography, meaning that the letterå will be used. Family names may not follow modern orthography, and as such retain the digraphaa whereå would be used today.Aa remains in use as a transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons.Aa is treated likeÅ inalphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent lettersA, meaning that whilea is the first letter of the alphabet,aa is the last. This rule does not apply to non-Scandinavian names, so a modern atlas would list the German city ofAachen underA but list the Danish city ofAabenraa underÅ.

A difference between the Dano-Norwegian and theSwedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variantÄ instead ofÆ, and the variantÖ instead ofØ (likeGerman). Also, thecollating order for these three letters is different:Å,Ä,Ö.

Incomputing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:

• IBM PCcode page 865
• ISO 8859-1
• NS 4551-1, later established in international standardISO 646
• Unicode

• Norwegian phonology
• Norwegian language conflict
• Danish phonology
• Futhark, the Germanic runes used formerly
• Icelandic orthography
• Latin spelling alphabets
• Swedish alphabet

• Popperwell, Ronald G. (2010) [First published 1963],Pronunciation of Norwegian, Cambridge University Press,ISBN 978-0-521-15742-1

• Rettskriving og grammatikk - Språkrådet (in Norwegian)
• Type Norwegian characters online

• Norwegian language
• Indo-European Latin-script orthographies

• CS1 Norwegian-language sources (no)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from February 2019
• Use American English from February 2019
• All Wikipedia articles written in American English
• Articles needing additional references from January 2021
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