Have you ever wondered on what some of the differences between the Scandinavian languages are, how Norwegian works and why Norway have two written languages? Here's another take in my Norwegian-series on GAG.
The Norwegian language
History
The Norwegian language has been through many changes through history, but the modern and easily recognizable Norwegian wasn't invented before the 19th century. In the viking age Norwegians used the Norse language which is similar to the Icelandic one and many settled at Iceland. In ca. 1350s the black death came to Norway and almost half of the population died. Most people at that time was illiterate and it was mostly people working for the church that could read and write. Since they often helped the sick, they were more vulnerable and were almost wiped out.
The lack of well-educated people and resources forced Norway in an union with Denmark and Sweden where the Danish king ruled. Sweden got independence very early on, but Norway remained under Denmark's control for a longer period. The union time was a major reason for why the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish languages resembles each others the day today.
Many Norwegians wanted to become independent and gradually created an own Norwegian culture and national feeling. In 1814 Norwegians got the constitution of Norway on Eidsvoll, but Sweden ruled instead of Denmark at that time and Norway finally received full independence in 1905. Through the 19th century two men; Ivar Åsen and Knud Knudsen wanted to make an own Norwegian language that stood out from Danish. Knud thought very subtle changes were good and it became bokmål. Ivar wanted more drastic changes because he thought bokmål was too similar to Danish.
To represent the Norwegian people as much as possible, he traveled a lot inside the country to pick up as many dialects as possible. He choose some words from the dialects and combined it. Sometimes he also invented new words. It became nynorsk. The written languages have different spelling and grammar rules. It took some times before people accepted it, but nowadays it's mandatory to learn to write both bokmål and nynorsk in school. The majority of Norwegians writes in bokmål as their "first language" and have to learn nynorsk as a "second" one. It's not so common having it the other way around and therefor it's still a debate if nynorsk should still be mandatory in school.
Dialects
In Norway there are many dialects and the differences are often big, therefor many immigrants have difficulty learning Norwegian. The majority of immigrants learns to write bokmål and speaking either the Bergen or Oslo dialect first - which is quite similar to bokmål. The main four dialect categories are east-Norwegian (E.g. the Oslo dialect), West-Norwegian (E.g. the Bergen dialect), Trøndersk (E.g. the Trondheim dialect) and North-Norwegian (E.g. Finnmark). Norway also have South-Norwegian, but isn't one of the main categories.
The dialects have different words, spelling, pronunciations, intonations and grammar rules. The grammar rules can be how a sentence is supposed to end and genders. Some dialects only have masculine and neutral words, but others also have feminine words.
There's also several ways to say "I" in Norwegian. It's "Jeg", "Eg", "I", "Æ", "E" and "Je".
A trøndersk person in Norway can say: "Æ e i a, æ" and the sentence says the person belongs to the A-class in school. In bokmål it would be "Jeg går i A-klassen, jeg" and in nynorsk it would be "Eg går i A-klassen". Directly translated to English would be "I goes in the A-class, I" or "I'm in the A-class, I".
Trøndersk for "I've been in the woods looking for Christmas trees". In bokmål it would be "Jeg har vært i skogen for å se etter juletre".
East-Norwegian have both a happy sounding intonation that goes up and all the gendered endings. The Bergen dialect only have masculine and neutral endings, in addition the intonation goes more straight forward and the r-sounds are harsher. Trøndere and North-Norwegians uses vowels a lot like "æ", "ø", "å", "a" and "i" for instance. Some south-Norwegian dialects sounds like Danish both intonation and pronunciation wise with soft consonants.
What Norwegian dialects sounds like:
Sociolects
Norway have many sociolects and one of them are kebab-Norwegian which is common in Oslo. I'm not going to mention any others ones since most of them aren't very well known and people speaks them mostly in their private lives. I'm not stalking people and don't know that many either.
Kebab-Norwegian is the most well-known sociolect in Norway and consists of several languages like Norwegian, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Spanish and English in addition to many other languages. It's mostly spoken by immigrants, but some Norwegians also speaks it with their friends. Some of the speakers can speak standard Norwegian dialects too. The sociolect have it's own vocabulary, spelling, grammar and pronunciation. In general speaking it's more difficult for an average Norwegian to understand it than an American to understand AAVE. You've to learn Kebab-Norwegian from your friends to be able to understand and speak it. It's not an official dialect or language and it's called "kebab-Norwegian" since it's heavily influenced by middle-eastern languages. Kebab (Here: Shawarma) is also middle-eastern.
Kebab norwegian: La oss avor, baosj kommer!
Norwegian bokmål: La oss stikke, politiet kommer!
English: Let's go, the police are coming!
Scandinavian & Nordic languages
Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are the three Scandinavian languages. Icelandic is a Nordic one, but not really a Scandinavian one. But I'm going to include that one too since it shares some similarities with them and are part of their language history. Finnish isn't included since it belongs to another language family tree and it's a misconception Finnish resemble these languages. Finnish may resemble the Sami languages, but both the Finnish and Sami languages don't resemble the Scandinavians at all. There are Samis in Norway.
The Danish language are very similar to the Norwegian one and especially when it's written. Danish and Norwegian bokmål's spelling have more in common than what bokmål have with Trøndersk. Many of the words are spelled the same and they shares much of their vocabulary, but Danish use more English-like words than Norwegian and use the letter "C" more frequently. A Norwegian would say "sykle" and a Dane would say "cycle" like an English man. In addition Danish has soft consonants and use letters like "b", "d" and "g" where Norwegians would use letters like "p", "t" and "k".
Danish: Bløde, Fløde, Kage, Nødder, Ræger
Norwegian: Bløte, Fløte, Kake, Nøtter, Reker
English: Soft, Cream, Cake, Nuts, Schrimps
The soft consonants are one of the reasons why Norwegians thinks it may be more difficult to understand Danish speech than Swedish in addition to how Danes pronunciation each letters. Some Norwegians thinks Danish sounds like Norwegian speakers with a potato in their throat or people choking on something. The Swedish pronunciation are more alike Norwegian than Danish, therefor Norwegians usually don't have any problem understanding Swedish speech although they've more different words than Danish. Swedish is also written differently than Norwegian and Danish. Instead of using "Å" and "Ø", they uses "ä" and "ö".
In Swedish they writes "red" likes this: "röd" instead of "rød". The spelling of the words also looks less like Norwegian than what Danish does. Bokmål words usually ends with "e", but Swedish words often ends with "a". Norwegians can still read Swedish and understand it very well, but Danish is easier for them. Most similar words means the same thing, but that's not always the case. "Rolig" is the Swedish word for "funny", but in Norwegian it means "calm" and use the word "morsom" instead. Another example is "glass". It has the same meaning in both Norway and England, but means "ice cream" in Sweden.
Icelandic may be slightly easier to learn than German for Scandinavians, but have still too many differences to understand it without learning it. Iceland has also their own letters that the Scandinavian languages don't use. I've not studied Icelandic and can therefor not understand it. Actually, Norwegians tends to understand Swedish and Danish better than Swedish and Danish can understand Norwegian. Swedish and Danish people also have difficulty understand each others.
Summary:
Norwegian has changed a lot through history because of the black death and Scandinavian union. It has many dialects and are difficult for immigrants to learn. Norway also have socialects and kebab-Norwegian are the most known one. Norwegian, Danish and Swedish resembles each others. For Norwegians it's easier to understand Swedish speech and written Danish than visa versa. Scandinavians can't understand Icelandic very well without learning it although they've some words in common. Finnish isn't from the same language tree as the Scandinavian language and is much harder to understand than Icelandic without learning it.
Sources: Store Norske Leksikon (The Norwegian official Encyclopedia)
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