The Norwegian language war: from no to two official languages - Werner Skalla | PGO 2024

Did you know that Norwegian has two official written languages? Even though the Norwegian language is spoken by just five million people, and it’s technically so close to Danish and Swedish that we could consider all these languages as the same language? In this workshop Werner will explain how that happened, and why the Norwegians call it “language war” (språkstriden).
WERNER SKALLA
Werner is a publisher of story-based language learning textbooks and online courses. He is fluent in five languages (German, Norwegian, English, French, and Czech).
Website: skapago.eu
This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering Online 2024 (www.polyglotga...).

[@coffeemachtspass]

A very interesting presentation by Mr. Skalla/Skallen/Skalli.

[@hcholm]

This is very well informed and accurate. I can also confirm that Werner speaks Norwegian at near native level. (At least his Tromsø dialect would pass as native for most people from Oslo.)
Some comments: The Dano-Norwegian language was frequently called 'dansk-norsk' around 1850, the term 'riksmål' came a few years later. The Samnorsk project was closely associated with the social democratic Labour Party, which no longer considered itself socialist at the time. The term 'nynorsk' ('New Norwegian') is meant to contrast with Old Norwegian, i.e. the way Norwegian is spoken today. Dictionaries mention "Norwegian language after 1500" as an alternative meaning of 'nynorsk', but usually "modern Norwegian" is used instead to avoid confusion. The 1938 reform still allowed 'soli' as a so-called "side form" in Nynorsk, but these forms and some related forms, called "i-mål" ("i-language"), were removed from standard Nynorsk in 2012. Bokmål had 'verken' as the only allowed form from 1959 to 2005, but now both 'hverken' and 'verken' are allowed in Bokmål. Some combinations of number forms are very rare or not used at all, like 'tyvetre'. The Donald Duck story is "Eggmysteriet", first published with the Nynorsk-speaking characters in 1963. The 1981 Bokmål reform reintroduced several forms that had not been not allowed because of the Samnorsk policy. This ended the Samnorsk era in practice, but Samnorsk was still official policy until 2002, although only in theory. The "bracket forms" were not allowed in school books. The system with "bracket forms" was abolished in Bokmål in 2005 and in Nynorsk in 2012. You may also hear news presenters using dialect nowadays, even when they read from a script. In principle, you may hear spoken dialect in any situation, no matter how formal. Some speakers even take care to speak "proper" dialect in formal settings, such as parliament speeches. Credit to Werner also for emphasising that the dialects are not that different from each other, contrary to popular belief.
Yes, it's complicated.

[@biaberg3448]

We have 9 official languages in Norway. Bokmål, nynorsk, nordsamisk, sørsamisk, lulesamiske, kvensk, romani, romanes and tegnspråk.

[@Yogaleif]

We often use the word «målstriden» about this phenomena. Norwegian «strid» is not synonymous with English «war». I take issue with the use of the word «war» in this context.