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Norwegian
| Norwegian | |
|---|---|
| Language code (ISO 639-1) | no, nb, nn |
| Language code (ISO 639-2) 3-char | nor |
| Native speakers (L1) | 5320000 |
| 2nd language speakers (L2) | |
| Wikipedia page to check | wikipedia:Norwegian language |
Norwegian (Norwegian: norsk [ˈnɔʂːk]) is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language.
Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties; some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages.
Faroese and Icelandic are not mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it.
Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age.
Two forms
Today there are two official forms of written Norwegian, Bokmål (Riksmål) and Nynorsk (Landsmål), each with its own variants.
- Bokmål developed from the Dano-Norwegian language that replaced Middle Norwegian as the elite language after the union of Denmark–Norway in the 16th and 17th centuries and then evolved in Norway
- Nynorsk was developed based upon a collective of spoken Norwegian dialects.
Note that both ISO 693-1 codes for Bokmal and Nynorsk - nb and nn - have been added to the general code no.
General
Norwegian is one of the two official languages in Norway, along with Sámi, a Finno-Ugric language spoken by less than one percent of the population.
Norwegian is one of the working languages of the Nordic Council.
Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries who speak Norwegian have the opportunity to use it when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.