Norwegian
Norwegian is spoken by about 5 million people worldwide, most of whom live
in Norway. It is a member of the East Scandinavian subgroup of the Germanic
branch of the Indo European Language family. Spoken Norwegian consists of many
distinct dialects due to the fact that the Norwegian people lived in isolated
groups for years, physically cut off from one another by the numerous rivers,
mountains and fjords that make up the geography of Norway. There is no spoken
standard for Norwegian. When people speak, they speak their dialects, and dialects
are used in schools, on TV and on the radio. The dialects are, however, for
the most part, mutually intelligible.
The written language, on the other hand, does have a standard, or rather, two
standard forms called "Nynorsk" (New-Norwegian) and "Bokmål"
(Dano-Norwegian). New Norwegian was created by a single man, Ivar Aasen, who
sought to find common ground among the many spoken dialects when developing
his written standard. Dano-Norwegain, as the name suggests, derives from Danish.
The Danish language was the written language of Norway for centuries. Dano-Norwegian
is thus a Norwegianized version of Danish.. It was reported in 1971 that 30%
of the people used Nynorsk as their main written language.
Sources:
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Local Resources:
UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
International web radio
Landmark
Theaters: foreign films
The Folk Dancer
Sons of Norway