Norwegian language

Norwegian
norsk
Pronunciation[nɔʂk] (East and North)
[nɔʁsk] (West)
Native to Norway
 Sweden
 Finland
 Russia
EthnicityNorwegians
Native speakers
4.3 million (2012)[1]
Early forms
Standard forms
written Bokmål (official)
 • written Riksmål (unofficial)
written Nynorsk (official)
 • written Høgnorsk (unofficial)
Latin (Norwegian alphabet)
Norwegian Braille
Norwegian Sign Language
Official status
Official language in
 Norway
Nordic Council
Regulated byLanguage Council of Norway (Bokmål and Nynorsk)
Norwegian Academy (Riksmål)
Ivar Aasen-sambandet (Høgnorsk)
Language codes
ISO 639-1no – inclusive code

Individual codes:
nbBokmål

nnNynorsk
ISO 639-2nor – inclusive code

Individual codes:
nob – Bokmål

nno – Nynorsk
ISO 639-3nor – inclusive code
Individual codes:
nob – Bokmål
nno – Nynorsk
Glottolognorw1258
Linguasphere52-AAA-ba to -be;
52-AAA-cf to -cg
Areas where Norwegian is spoken, including North Dakota (where 0.4% of the population speaks Norwegian) and Minnesota (0.1% of the population) (Data: U.S. Census 2000).
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Norwegian language is the official language of Norway. It is spoken by over four and a half million people, and it belongs to the group of North Germanic languages which are spoken in Scandinavia. These include Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and Faeroese.

Two forms of the language exist: bokmål (which means "book language") and nynorsk (which means "new Norwegian").

  1. De Smedt, Koenraad; Lyse, Gunn Inger; Gjesdal, Anje Müller; Losnegaard, Gyri S. (2012). The Norwegian Language in the Digital Age. White Paper Series. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 45. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-31389-9. ISBN 9783642313882. Norwegian is the common spoken and written language in Norway and is the native language of the vast majority of the Norwegian population (more than 90%) and has about 4,320,000 speakers at present.

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