LANGUAGE

The official languages of Norway are Nynorsk, Bokml and Sami. Nynorsk (New Norwegian) is based on the colloquial Norwegian and regional dialects, particularly from western Norway. Bokml (Book Language) is the written language and is similar to Danish. Sami is the language of the northern peoples. HISTORY Between the 9th and 14th centuries the written language of Norway was West Norse. Norway came under the rule of Sweden and then Denmark at which point Danish became the language for official purposes, literature and higher education but Norwegian was still used in conversation. After separating from Denmark in 1814 the Danish language continued to be used in schools. Because written Danish differed significantly from spoken Norwegian a movement began in the 1830s to create a new national language. Two languages emerged from the debate about a national language. Landsml which was renamed Nynorsk in 1929 and Riksml which became Bokml. Schools can teach either but civil servants are expected to be able to use both. The great thing about Norway, not to mention many other European countries, is that English is taught in schools as a second language. Many Norwegians not only speak the Norwegian languages and English but many are fluent in one or more languages besides. The Norwegian language contains three additional vowels beyond the Latin alphabet, , , and . The vowels have distinctive sounds. The Norwegian computer keyboard includes these characters as well as the symbols for British Pounds and Euros. This changes the layout a little. You can also use the insert symbol when working in MS Word to add the special characters or you can use multi key coding to enter the characters. 0198 0216 0197 0230 0248 0229 While holding down the alt key enter the four digit code.