Areas where Norwegian is spoken, includingNorth Dakota (where 0.4% of the population speaks Norwegian), westernWisconsin (<0.1% of the population), andMinnesota (0.1% of the population) (Data: U.S. Census 2000).
Today there are two official forms ofwritten Norwegian,Bokmål (Riksmål) andNynorsk (Landsmål), each with its own variants.Bokmål developed from theDano-Norwegian language that replacedMiddle Norwegian as the elite language after the union ofDenmark–Norway in the 16th and 17th centuries and then evolved in Norway, whileNynorsk was developed based upon a collective of spoken Norwegian dialects. Norwegian is one of the two official languages in Norway, along withSámi, a group ofFinno-Ugric languages spoken by less than one percent of the population. Norwegian is one of the working languages of theNordic Council. Under theNordic Language Convention, citizens of theNordic countries who speak Norwegian have the opportunity to use it when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for anyinterpretation ortranslation costs.[3][4]
Close-up of the "idiberug/n" inscription on theHole Runestone dating beween1 and 250 CE. Believed to be the oldest writing in Norway and rest ofthe Nordics to date. The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century:
OtherGermanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility
Like most of the languages in Europe, Norwegian derives fromProto-Indo-European. As early Indo-Europeans spread across Europe, they became isolated from each other and new languages developed. In northwest Europe, theGermanic languages evolved, further branching off into theNorth Germanic languages, of which Norwegian is one.
Proto-Norse is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect ofProto-Germanic during the first centuries AD in what is today Southern Sweden. It is the earliest stage of a characteristically North Germanic language, and the languageattested in theElder Futhark inscriptions, the oldest form of therunic alphabets. A number of inscriptions are memorials to the dead, while others are magical in content. The oldest are carved on loose objects, while later ones are chiseled inrunestones.[5] They are the oldest written record of any Germanic language.
Around 800 AD, the script was simplified to theYounger Futhark, and inscriptions became more abundant. At the same time, the beginning of theViking Age led to the spread ofOld Norse toIceland,Greenland, and theFaroe Islands. Viking colonies also existed in parts of theBritish Isles, France (Normandy), North America, andKievan Rus. In all of these places except Iceland and the Faroes, Old Norse speakers went extinct or were absorbed into the local population.[5]
Around 1030, Christianity came toScandinavia, bringing with it an influx ofLatin borrowings and theRoman alphabet. These new words were related tochurch practices and ceremonies, although many other loanwords related to general culture also entered the language.
The Scandinavian languages at this time are not considered to be separate languages, although there were minor differences among what are customarily called Old Icelandic,Old Norwegian,Old Gutnish, Old Danish, andOld Swedish.
This articleis missing information about language evolution between the 11th-15th century. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on thetalk page.(February 2025)
The economic and political dominance of theHanseatic League between 1250 and 1450 in the main Scandinavian cities brought largeMiddle Low German–speaking populations to Norway. The influence of their language on Scandinavian is comparable with that of French on English after theNorman conquest.[5]
In the late Middle Ages, dialects began to develop in Scandinavia because the population was rural and little travel occurred. When theReformation came from Germany,Martin Luther'sHigh German translation of the Bible was quickly translated into Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. Norway entered a union with Denmark in 1397 and Danish, over time, replacedMiddle Norwegian as the language of the elite, the church, literature, and the law. When the union with Denmark ended in 1814, theDano-Norwegiankoiné had become the mother tongue of around 1% of the population.[6]
From the 1840s, some writers experimented with a Norwegianised form of written Danish.Knud Knudsen proposed to change spelling and inflection in accordance with the Dano-Norwegiankoiné, known as "cultivated everyday speech." A small adjustment in this direction was implemented in the first official reform of the Danish language in Norway in 1862 and more extensively after his death in two official reforms in 1907 and 1917.
Meanwhile, a nationalistic movement strove for the development of a new written Norwegian.Ivar Aasen, a botanist and self-taught linguist, began his work to create a new Norwegian language at the age of 22. He traveled around the country collecting words and examples of grammar from the dialects and comparing the dialects among the different regions. He examined the development ofIcelandic, which had largely escaped the influences under which Norwegian had come. He called his work, which was published in several books from 1848 to 1873,Landsmål, meaning 'national language'. The nameLandsmål is sometimes interpreted as 'rural language' or 'country language', but this was clearly not Aasen's intended meaning.
The name of the Danish language in Norway was a topic of hot dispute throughout the 19th century. Its proponents claimed that it was a language common to Norway and Denmark, and no more Danish than Norwegian. The proponents of Landsmål thought that the Danish character of the language should not be concealed. In 1899,Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson proposed the neutral nameRiksmål, meaning 'national language' likeLandsmål, and this was officially adopted along with the 1907 spelling reform. The nameRiksmål is sometimes interpreted as 'state language', but this meaning is secondary at best. (Compare toDanishrigsmål from where the name was borrowed.)
After the personal union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905, both languages were developed further and reached what is now considered their classic forms after a reform in 1917. Riksmål was, in 1929, officially renamedBokmål (literally 'book language'), and Landsmål toNynorsk (literally 'new Norwegian'). A proposition to substitute Danish-Norwegian (dansk-norsk) forBokmål lost in parliament by a single vote.[7] The nameNynorsk, the linguistic term formodern Norwegian, was chosen to contrast with Danish and emphasise the historical connection to Old Norwegian. Today, this meaning is often lost, and it is commonly mistaken as a "new" Norwegian in contrast to the "real" Norwegian Bokmål.
Bokmål and Nynorsk were made closer by a reform in 1938. This was a result of a state policy to merge Nynorsk and Bokmål into a single language, to be calledSamnorsk. A 1946 poll showed that this policy was supported by 79% of Norwegians at the time. However, opponents of the official policy still managed to create a massive protest movement againstSamnorsk in the 1950s, fighting in particular the use of "radical" forms in Bokmål text books in schools. In the reform in 1959, the 1938 reform was partially reversed in Bokmål, but Nynorsk was changed further towards Bokmål. Since then Bokmål has reverted even further toward traditional Riksmål, while Nynorsk still adheres to the 1959 standard. Therefore, a small minority of Nynorsk enthusiasts use a more conservative standard calledHøgnorsk. The Samnorsk policy had little influence after 1960, and was officially abandoned in 2002.
The retroflex consonants only appear in East Norwegian dialects as a result ofsandhi, combining/ɾ/ with/d/,/l/,/n/,/s/, and/t/.
The realization of the rhotic/ɾ/ depends on the dialect. In Eastern, Central, and Northern Norwegian dialects, it is a flap[ɾ], whereas in Western and Southern Norway, and for some speakers also in Eastern Norway, it is uvular[ʁ] or[χ]. And in the dialects of North-Western Norway, it is realized as[r], much like the trilled⟨rr⟩ of Spanish.
Norwegian is apitch-accent language with two distinct pitch patterns, like Swedish. They are used to differentiate two-syllable words with otherwise identical pronunciation. For example, in many East Norwegian dialects, the wordbønder ('farmers') is pronounced using the simpler tone 1, whilebønner ('beans' or 'prayers') uses the more complex tone 2. Though spelling differences occasionally differentiate written words, in most cases the minimal pairs are written alike, since written Norwegian has no explicit accent marks. In most eastern low-tone dialects, accent 1 uses a low flat pitch in the first syllable, while accent 2 uses a high, sharply falling pitch in the first syllable and a low pitch in the beginning of the second syllable. In both accents, these pitch movements are followed by a rise ofintonational nature (phrase accent)—the size (and presence) of which signals emphasis or focus, and corresponds in function to the normal accent in languages that lacklexical tone, such as English. That rise culminates in the final syllable of an accentual phrase, while the utterance-final fall common in most languages is either very small or absent.
There are significant variations in pitch accent between dialects. Thus, in most of western and northern Norway (the so-called high-pitch dialects) accent 1 is falling, while accent 2 is rising in the first syllable and falling in the second syllable or somewhere around the syllable boundary. The pitch accents (as well as the peculiar phrase accent in the low-tone dialects) give the Norwegian language a "singing" quality that makes it easy to distinguish from other languages. Accent 1 generally occurs in words that were monosyllabic inOld Norse, and accent 2 in words that were polysyllabic.
The lettersc,q,w,x andz are only used inloanwords. As loanwords are assimilated into Norwegian, their spelling might change to reflect Norwegian pronunciation and the principles of Norwegian orthography, e.g.zebra in Norwegian is writtensebra. Due to historical reasons, some otherwise Norwegian family names are also written using these letters.
Some letters may be modified bydiacritics:é,è,ê,ó,ò, andô.[9][10] In Nynorsk,ì andù andỳ are occasionally seen as well.[citation needed] The diacritics are not compulsory, but may in a few cases distinguish between different meanings of the word, e.g.:for ('for/to'),fór ('went'),fòr ('furrow') andfôr ('fodder').[10] Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notablyï, ü[10],á andà.[citation needed]
Map of the official language forms of Norwegian municipalities: red isBokmål, blue isNynorsk, and gray depicts neutral areas.
The two legally recognized forms ofwritten Norwegian areBokmål (literally 'book tongue') andNynorsk ('new Norwegian'), which are regulated by theLanguage Council of Norway (Språkrådet).[11] Two other written forms without official status also exist. One, calledRiksmål ('national language'), is today to a large extent the same language as Bokmål though somewhat closer to the Danish language. It is regulated by the unofficialNorwegian Academy, which translates the name as 'Standard Norwegian'. The other isHøgnorsk ('High Norwegian'), a morepurist form of Nynorsk, which maintains the language in an original form as given byIvar Aasen and rejects most of the reforms from the 20th century; this form has limited use.
Nynorsk and Bokmål provide standards for how to write Norwegian, but not for how to speak the language. No standard of spoken Norwegian is officially sanctioned, and mostNorwegians speak their own dialects in all circumstances. Thus, unlike in many other countries, the use of any Norwegian dialect, whether it coincides with the written norms or not, is accepted as correctspoken Norwegian. However, in areas whereEast Norwegian dialects are used, a tendency exists to accept a de facto spoken standard for this particular regional dialect,Urban East Norwegian or Standard East Norwegian (Norwegian:Standard østnorsk), in which the vocabulary coincides with Bokmål.[12][13] OutsideEastern Norway, this spoken variation is not used.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related tonationalism, rural versus urban discourse, and Norway's literary history. Historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianised variety of Danish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish. The now-abandoned official policy to merge Bokmål and Nynorsk into one common language calledSamnorsk through a series of spelling reforms has created a wide spectrum of varieties of both Bokmål and Nynorsk. The unofficial form known asRiksmål is considered moreconservative than Bokmål and is far closer to Danish while the unofficialHøgnorsk is more conservative than Nynorsk and is far closer toFaroese,Icelandic andOld Norse.
Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. Each student gets assigned a native form based on which school they go to, whence the other form (known asSidemål) will be a mandatory school subject from elementary school through high school.[14] For instance, a Norwegian whose main language form is Bokmål will study Nynorsk as a mandatory subject throughout both elementary and high school. A 2005 poll indicates that 86.3% use primarily Bokmål as their daily written language, 5.5% use both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and 7.5% use primarily Nynorsk.[citation needed] Broadly speaking, Nynorsk writing is widespread in western Norway, though not in major urban areas, and also in the upper parts of mountain valleys in the southern and eastern parts of Norway. Examples areSetesdal, the western part ofTelemark county (fylke) and several municipalities inHallingdal,Valdres, andGudbrandsdalen. It is little used elsewhere, but 30–40 years ago,[as of?] it also had strongholds in many rural parts ofTrøndelag (mid-Norway) and the southern part of northern Norway (Nordland county). Today, Nynorsk is the official language of not only four of the nineteen Norwegian counties but also various municipalities in five other counties.NRK, the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, broadcasts in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and all governmental agencies are required to support both written languages. Bokmål is used in 92% of all written publications, and Nynorsk in 8% (2000).[citation needed]
Like some other European countries, Norway has an official "advisory board"—Språkrådet (Norwegian Language Council)— that determines, after approval from the Ministry of Culture, official spelling, grammar, and vocabulary for the Norwegian language. The board's work has been subject to considerable controversy throughout the years.
Both Nynorsk and Bokmål have a great variety of optional forms. The Bokmål that uses the forms that are close to Riksmål is calledmoderate orconservative, depending on one's viewpoint, while the Bokmål that uses the forms that are close to Nynorsk is calledradical. Nynorsk has forms that are close to the original Landsmål and forms that are close to Bokmål.
Opponents of the spelling reforms aimed at bringing Bokmål closer to Nynorsk have retained the name Riksmål and employ spelling and grammar that predate the Samnorsk movement. Riksmål and conservative versions of Bokmål have been thede facto standard written language of Norway for most of the 20th century, being used by large newspapers, encyclopedias, and a significant proportion of the population of the capital Oslo, surrounding areas, and other urban areas, as well as much of the literary tradition. Since the reforms of 1981 and 2003 (effective in 2005), the official Bokmål can be adapted to be almost identical with modern Riksmål. The differences between written Riksmål and Bokmål are comparable toAmerican and British English differences.
Riksmål is regulated by theNorwegian Academy, which determines acceptable spelling, grammar, and vocabulary.
There is also an unofficial form of Nynorsk, calledHøgnorsk, discarding the post-1917 reforms, and thus close to Ivar Aasen's original Landsmål. It is supported byIvar Aasen-sambandet, but has found no widespread use.
In 2010, 86.5% of the pupils in the primary and lower secondary schools in Norway receive education in Bokmål, while 13.0% receive education in Nynorsk. From the eighth grade onwards, pupils are required to learn both. Out of the 431 municipalities in Norway, 161 have declared that they wish to communicate with the central authorities in Bokmål, 116 (representing 12% of the population) in Nynorsk, while 156 are neutral. Of 4,549 state publications in 2000, 8% were in Nynorsk, and 92% in Bokmål. The large national newspapers (Aftenposten,Dagbladet, andVG) are published in Bokmål or Riksmål. Some major regional newspapers (includingBergens Tidende andStavanger Aftenblad), many political journals, and many local newspapers use both Bokmål and Nynorsk.
A newer trend is to write in dialect for informal use. When writing an SMS, Facebook update, or fridge note, many people, especially young ones, write approximations of the way they talk rather than using Bokmål or Nynorsk.[15][16]
There is general agreement that a wide range of differences makes it difficult to estimate the number of different Norwegian dialects. Variations in grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation cut across geographical boundaries and can create a distinct dialect at the level of farm clusters. Dialects are in some cases so dissimilar as to be unintelligible to unfamiliar listeners. Many linguists note a trend toward regionalization of dialects that diminishes the differences at such local levels;[17] there is, however, a renewed interest in preserving dialects.
Norwegian nouns belong to threenoun classes (genders): masculine, feminine and neuter. All feminine nouns can optionally be inflected using masculine noun class morphology in Bokmål due to its Danish heritage.[18] In comparison, the use of all three genders (including the feminine) is mandatory in Nynorsk.[19]
All Norwegian dialects have traditionally retained all the three grammatical genders fromOld Norse to some extent.[20] The only exceptions are thedialect of Bergen and a few upper class sociolects atthe west end of Oslo that have completely lost the feminine gender.[20][21]
According toMarit Westergaard, approximately 80% of nouns in Norwegian are masculine.[22]
Examples, nouns in Bokmål
Singular
Plural
Indefinite
Definite
Indefinite
Definite
Masculine
en båt
båten
båter
båtene
a boat
the boat
boats
the boats
Feminine
ei/en vogn
vogna/vognen
vogner
vognene
a wagon
the wagon
wagons
the wagons
Neuter
et hus
huset
hus
husa/husene
a house
the house
houses
the houses
Norwegian and other Scandinavian languages use asuffix to indicatedefiniteness of a noun, unlike English which has a separate article,the, to indicate the same.
In general, almost all nouns in Bokmål follow these patterns[23] (like the words in the examples above):
Nouns in Bokmål
Singular
Plural
Indefinite
Definite
Indefinite
Definite
Masculine
en
-en
-er
-ene
Feminine
ei/en
-a/-en
Neuter
et
-et
-/-er
-a/-ene
In contrast, almost all nouns in Nynorsk follow these patterns[19] (the noun gender system is more pronounced than in Bokmål):
Nouns in Nynorsk
Singular
Plural
Indefinite
Definite
Indefinite
Definite
Masculine
ein
-en
-ar
-ane
Feminine
ei
-a
-er
-ene
Neuter
eit
-et
–
-a
Examples, nouns in Nynorsk
Singular
Plural
Indefinite
Definite
Indefinite
Definite
Masculine
ein båt
båten
båtar
båtane
a boat
the boat
boats
the boats
Feminine
ei vogn
vogna
vogner
vognene
a wagon
the wagon
wagons
the wagons
Neuter
eit hus
huset
hus
husa
a house
the house
houses
the houses
There is in general no way to infer what grammatical gender a specific noun has, but there are some patterns of nouns where the gender can be inferred. For instance, all nouns ending in -nad will be masculine in both Bokmål and Nynorsk (for instance the nounjobbsøknad, which means 'job application'). Most nouns ending in -ing will be feminine, like the nounforventning ('expectation').
There are some common irregular nouns, many of which are irregular in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, like the following:
In Nynorsk, even though the irregular wordfot is masculine, it is inflected like a feminine word in the plural. Another word with the same irregular inflection isson – søner ('son – sons').
In Nynorsk, nouns ending in -ing typically have masculine plural inflections, like the worddronning in the following table. But they are treated as feminine nouns in every other way.[19]
Nynorsk, some irregular nouns
Gender
Nouns ending with -ing
English
Feminine
ei dronning
dronninga
dronningar
dronningane
queen
Plurals withumlaut (these irregularities also exist in Bokmål)
Feminine
ei bok
boka
bøker
bøkene
book
ei hand
handa
hender
hendene
hand
ei stong
stonga
stenger
stengene
rod
ei tå
tåa
tær
tærne
toe
Plurals with no ending (these irregularities also exist in Bokmål)
In general, thegenitive case has died out in modern Norwegian and there are only some remnants of it in certain expressions:til fjells ('to the mountains'),til sjøs ('to the sea'). To show ownership, there is anenclitic -s similar to English -'s;Sondres flotte bil ('Sondre's nice car',Sondre being a personal name). There are also reflexive possessive pronouns,sin,si,sitt,sine;Det er Sondre sitt ('It is Sondre's'). In both Bokmål and modern Nynorsk, there is often a mix of both of these to mark possession, though it is more common in Nynorsk to use the reflexive pronouns; in Nynorsk use of the reflexive possessive pronouns is generally encouraged to avoid mixing the enclitic -s with the historical grammatical case remnants of the language. The reflexive pronouns agree in gender and number with the noun.
The enclitic -s in Norwegian evolved as a shorthand expression for the possessive pronounssin,si,sitt andsine.[citation needed]
Norwegianadjectives, like those of Swedish and Danish, inflect fordefiniteness,gender,number and forcomparison (affirmative/comparative/superlative). Inflection for definiteness follows two paradigms, called "weak" and "strong", a feature shared among theGermanic languages.
The following table summarizes the inflection of adjectives in Norwegian. The indefinite affirmative inflection can vary between adjectives, but in general the paradigm illustrated below is the most common.[25]
In most dialects, some verb participles used as adjectives have a separate form in both definite and plural uses,[26] and sometimes also in the masculine-feminine singular. In some Southwestern dialects, the definite adjective is also declined in gender and number with one form for feminine and plural, and one form for masculine and neuter.
In Norwegian, a definite noun has a suffixed definite article (cf. above) compared to English which in general uses the separate wordthe to indicate the same. However, when a definite noun is preceded by an adjective, the adjective also gets a definite inflection, shown in the inflection table above. There is also another definite marker,den, that has to agree in gender with the noun when the definite noun is accompanied by an adjective.[27] It comes before the adjective and has the following forms
Determinativeden (Bokmål)
Masculine
Feminine
Neuter
Plural
Den
Den
Det
De
Examples of definite affirmative inflection of adjectives (Bokmål):
Denstjålne bilen ('Thestolen car')
Denpene jenta ('Thepretty girl')
Detgrønne eplet ('Thegreen apple')
Destjålne bilene ('Thestolen cars')
If the adjective is dropped completely, the meaning of the preceding article before the noun changes, as shown in this example.
Examples (Bokmål):
Den bilen ('That car')
Den jenta ('That girl')
Det eplet ('That apple')
De bilene ('Those cars')
Examples of definite comparative and superlative inflection of adjectives (Bokmål):
Detgrønnere eplet ('Thegreener apple')
Detgrønneste eplet ('Thegreenest apple')
Definiteness is also signaled by using possessive pronouns or any uses of a noun in its genitive form in either Nynorsk or Bokmål:mitt grønne hus ('my green house'),min grønne bil ('my green car'),mitt tilbaketrukne tannkjøtt ('my receding gums'),presidentens gamle hus ('the president's old house').[28]
There is also predicative agreement of adjectives in all dialects of Norwegian and in the written languages, unlike related languages like German and Dutch.[29] This feature of predicative agreement is shared among the Scandinavian languages. Predicative adjectives do not inflect for definiteness unlike the attributive adjectives.
This means that nouns will have to agree with the adjective when there is acopula verb involved, like in Bokmål:være ('to be'),bli ('become'),ser ut ('looks like'),kjennes ('feels like') etc.
This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(June 2019)
Norwegianverbs are notconjugated forperson ornumber, unlikeEnglish and mostEuropean languages, though a fewNorwegian dialects do conjugate for number. Norwegian verbs are conjugated according to mainly threegrammatical moods:indicative,imperative andsubjunctive, though the subjunctive mood has largely fallen out of use and is mainly found in a few common frozen expressions.[30] The imperative is formed by removing the last vowel of the infinitive verb form, just like in the other Scandinavian languages.
Indicative verbs are conjugated fortense:present,past, andfuture. The present and past tense also have apassive form for the infinitive.
The participles areverbal adjectives. The imperfective participle is not declined, whereas the perfect participle is declined forgender (though not in Bokmål) andnumber like strong, affirmative adjectives. Thedefinite form of the participle is identical to the plural form.
As with other Germanic languages, Norwegian verbs can be divided into two conjugation classes;weak verbs andstrong verbs.
Verb forms in Nynorsk leva ('to live') andfinna ('to find')
There areergative verbs in both Bokmål and Nynorsk,[31] where there are two different conjugation patterns depending on if the verb takes an object or not. In Bokmål, there are only two different conjugations for thepreterite tense for the strong verbs, while Nynorsk has different conjugations for all tenses, like Swedish and a majority of Norwegian dialects. Some weak verbs are also ergative and are differentiated for all tenses in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, likeligge/legge, both of which meaning 'to lie down', butligge does not take an object whilelegge requires an object.Legge corresponds to the English verb 'lay', whileligge corresponds to the English verb 'lie'. There are, however, many verbs that do not have a direct translation to English verbs.
Norwegian personalpronouns are declined according tocase:nominative andaccusative. Like English, pronouns in Bokmål and Nynorsk are the only class that has case declension. Some of the dialects that have preserved thedative in nouns, also have a dative case instead of the accusative case in personal pronouns, while others have accusative in pronouns and dative in nouns, effectively giving these dialects three distinct cases.
Since December 2017, the gender-neutral pronounhen is present in the Norwegian Academy's dictionary (NAOB).[32] In June 2022, the Language Council of Norway (Språkrådet)[33][34] started includinghen in both Bokmål and Nynorsk Norwegian standards.
The words for 'mine', 'yours' etc. are dependent on the gender of the noun described. Like adjectives, they have to agree in gender with the noun.
Bokmål has two sets of third-person pronouns.Han andhun refer to male and female individuals respectively;den anddet refer to impersonal or inanimate nouns, of masculine/feminine or neutral gender respectively. In contrast, Nynorsk and most dialects use the same set of pronounshan ('he'),ho ('she') anddet ('it') for both personal and impersonal references, like inGerman,Icelandic andOld Norse.Det also hasexpletive andcataphoric uses like in the English examplesit rains andit was known by everyone(that) he had travelled the world.
Examples in Nynorsk and Bokmål of the use of the pronounit
The ordering of possessive pronouns is somewhat freer than in Swedish or Danish. When there is no adjective, the most common word order is the one used in the examples in the table above, where the possessive comes after the noun, while the noun is in its definite form;boka mi ('my book'). If one wishes to emphasize the owner of the noun, the possessive pronoun will usually be placed first. In Bokmål, however, due to its Danish origins, one could choose to always write the possessive first:min bil ('my car'), but this may sound very formal. Some dialects that have been very influenced by Danish also do this; some speakers inBærum and thewest of Oslo may always use this word order. When there is an adjective describing the noun, the possessive pronoun will always come first:min egen bil ('my own car').
Norwegian has fiveclosed classes without inflection, i.e.lexical categories with grammatical function and a finite number of members that may not be distinguished by morphological criteria. These areinterjections,conjunctions,subjunctions,prepositions, andadverbs. The inclusion of adverbs here requires that traditional adverbs that are inflected incomparison be classified as adjectives, as is sometimes done.
Adverbs can be formed fromadjectives in Norwegian. English usually creates adverbs from adjectives by the suffix-ly, like the adverbbeautifully from the adjectivebeautiful. By comparison,Scandinavian languages usually form adverbs from adjectives by thegrammatical neuter singular form of the adjective. This is in general true for both Bokmål and Nynorsk.
In the third sentence,grusomt is an adverb. In the first and second sentencegrusomt andgrusom are adjectives and must agree in grammatical gender with the noun.
Another example is the adjectivevakker ('beautiful') which exists in both Nynorsk and Bokmål and has the neuter singular formvakkert.
In Norwegiancompound words, thehead, i.e. the part determining the compound's class, is the last part. If the compound word is constructed from many different nouns, the last noun in the compound noun will determine the gender of the compound noun. Only the first part has primary stress. For instance, the compoundtenketank ('think tank') has primary stress on the first syllable and is a masculine noun since the nountank is masculine.
Compound words are written together in Norwegian, which can cause words to become very long, for examplesannsynlighetsmaksimeringsestimator ('maximum likelihoodestimator') andmenneskerettighetsorganisasjoner ('human rights organizations'). Other examples are the titlehøyesterettsjustitiarius ('Chief Justice of the Supreme Court', originally a combination ofsupreme court and the actual title,justiciar) and the translationEn midtsommernattsdrøm forA Midsummer Night's Dream.
If they are not written together, each part is naturally read with primary stress, and the meaning of the compound is lost. Examples of this in English are the difference between a green house and a greenhouse or a black board and a blackboard.
This is sometimes forgotten, occasionally with humorous results. Instead of writing, for example,lammekoteletter ('lamb chops'), people make the mistake of writinglamme koteletter ('lame', or 'paralyzed', 'chops'). The original message can even be reversed, as whenrøykfritt (lit. 'smoke-free', meaning no smoking) becomesrøyk fritt ('smoke freely').
På hytte taket ('On cottage the roof') instead ofPå hyttetaket ('On the cottage roof')
Altfor Norge ('Too Norway') instead ofAlt for Norge ('Everything for Norway', theroyal motto of Norway)
These misunderstandings occur because most nouns can be interpreted as verbs or other types of words.Similar misunderstandings can be achieved in English too. The following are examples of phrases that both in Norwegian and English mean one thing as a compound word, and something different when regarded as separate words:
Norwegian syntax is predominantlySVO. The subject occupies the sentence-initial position, followed by the verb and then the object. Like many other Germanic languages, it follows theV2 rule, which means that the finite verb is invariably the second element in a sentence. For example:
Jegspiserfiski dag ('Ieat fishtoday')
Jegvildrikke kaffei dag ('Iwant to drink coffeetoday')
Exceptions to therule are embedded clauses and question phrases.
Negation in Norwegian is expressed by the wordikke, which literally means 'not' and is placed after the finite verb. Exceptions are embedded clauses.
Hunden komikke tilbake med ballen. ('The dog didnot return with the ball.')
Det var hunden somikke kom tilbake. ('It was the dog that didnot return.')
Contractions with the negation, as is accepted in for example English (cannot,hadn't,didn't) are limited to dialects and colloquial speech. In this case contractions apply to the negation and the verb. Otherwiseikke is applied in similar ways as the Englishnot and generalnegation.
Adverbs follow the verb they modify. Depending on the type of adverb, the order in which they appear in the phrase is pre-determined. Manner adverbs for example, precede temporal adverbs. Switching the order of these adverbs would not render the phrase ungrammatical, but would make it sound awkward. Compare this to the English phrase "John probably already ate dinner." Switching the adverbs' position (already andprobably) to "John already probably ate dinner" is not incorrect, but sounds unnatural. For more information, seeCartographic syntax.
Hun sangrørendevakkert. ('She sang touchingly beautiful.')
Hun sangutrolighøyt. ('She sang unbelievably loud.')
The adverb may precede the verb when the focus of the sentence is shifted. If special attention should be directed on the temporal aspect of the sentence, the adverb can be fronted. Since the V2 rule requires the finite verb to syntactically occupy the second position in the clause, the verb consequently also moves in front of the subject.
I dagviljegdrikke kaffe. ('Today,Iwant to drink coffee.')
I dagspiserjegfisk. ('Today,Ieat fish.')
Only one adverb may precede the verb, unless it belongs to a bigger constituent, in which case it does not modify the main verb in the phrase, but is part of the constituent.
Hun spiste suppenraskt i går. ('She ate the soup quickly yesterday.')
I gårspistehunsuppen raskt. ('Yesterday she ate the soup quickly.')
Laget som spiltebest,hadde forlatt plassen. ('The team that played the best had left the pitch.')
^De Smedt, Koenraad; Lyse, Gunn Inger; Gjesdal, Anje Müller; Losnegaard, Gyri S. (2012).The Norwegian Language in the Digital Age. White Paper Series. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 45.doi:10.1007/978-3-642-31389-9.ISBN9783642313882.Norwegian is the common spoken and written language in Norway and is the native language of the vast majority of the Norwegian population (more than 90%) and has about 4,320,000 speakers at present.
^Torp, Arne (2001)."Bokstaver og alfabet" [Letters and alphabet].Språknytt (in Norwegian) (4):1–4.Archived from the original on 30 June 2015. Retrieved23 June 2018.
^Johansen, Pål (22 August 2023),"cirkumfleks",Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian),archived from the original on 22 September 2022, retrieved1 December 2023
^abc"Språkrådet".elevrom.sprakradet.no.Archived from the original on 14 July 2018. Retrieved14 July 2018.
^abSkjekkeland, Martin (10 September 2018),"dialekter i Bergen",Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian),archived from the original on 15 May 2019, retrieved17 June 2019
^Hanssen, Eskil; Kjærheim, Harald; Skjekkeland, Martin (13 September 2016),"dialekter og språk i Oslo",Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian),archived from the original on 15 July 2018, retrieved14 July 2018
Rolf Theil Endresen, Hanne Gram Simonsen, Andreas Sveen,Innføring i lingvistikk (2002),ISBN82-00-45273-5
Jan Terje Faarlund, Svein Lie, Kjell Ivar Vannebo,Norsk referansegrammatikk, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo 1997, 2002 (3rd edition),ISBN82-00-22569-0 (Bokmål and Nynorsk)
Philip Holmes, Hans-Olav Enger,Norwegian: A Comprehensive Grammar, Routledge, Abingdon, 2018,ISBN978-0-415-83136-9
The Norwegian Language Council (1994),Language usage in Norway's civil service,in EnglishArchived 20 October 2017 at theWayback Machine
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