I found the statistics of what the population was in 1850 in Norway — 2 million 200 thousand. And I already wrote in the first part that for this population already at that time two literary languages were taking shape!!! And by the beginning of the 20th century the languages needed modernisation, therefore four language reforms of the “rural language” — landsmål — were carried out, which brought its norm closer to the specifics of the dialects of Eastern Norway, the most populated part of the country. Three reforms were also carried out with riksmål. Danish orthography was replaced by Norwegian.
And here I want to tell a practical moment that happens with me when I correspond with my daughter-in-law — a Dane. I write to her in Norwegian, she writes to me in Danish, we understand each other! And that is the main thing in language! TO UNDERSTAND! All the language reforms pursued a good aim: to bring the two languages closer, to lead them to a single language norm. But unfortunately the majority of the population ignored this, that is as mamas taught them to speak, so they spoke.
Well, and in 1929 riksmål and landsmål received the official names bokmål and nynorsk. And already in 1981 “Changes in orthography and the norm of school textbooks” restored in rights almost all previously widely used but unofficial forms.
And now I will have to write only one example that will show you how complex the Norwegian language is for “newly arrived” foreigners, including me. On the courses all arrivals study bokmål, it is also the main language of instruction for 83% of Norwegian schoolchildren and about 90% of printed production comes out in it.
So the simplest example with the word HAND. In bokmål the word ‘hand’ with the definite article has the following forms: hånden, hånda, handa, handen, and in Nynorsk (that is the one with a multitude of dialects) — handa, handi.
And there are also difficulties with numbers. One part of Norwegians, including foreigners, pronounce numbers in the “correct order,” 52 — this sounds like fifty-two (femtito), and elderly people pronounce such a number the other way round, as they say in mathematics, first the units, then the tens, that is toogfemti is translated as “two and fifty.” I hope I have not tired the reader too much with my short synopsis of the history of the Norwegian language. In the next part I will write about the northern people the Sámi. So to be continued…