Norwegian | |
---|---|
norsk | |
Pronunciation | [nɔʂk] (East and North) [nɔʁsk] (West) |
Native to | Norway Sweden Finland Russia |
Ethnicity | Norwegians |
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 by | Language Council of Norway (Bokmål and Nynorsk) Norwegian Academy (Riksmål) Ivar Aasen-sambandet (Høgnorsk) |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 |
|
ISO 639-2 | nor – inclusive codeIndividual codes: nno – Nynorsk |
ISO 639-3 | nor – inclusive codeIndividual codes: nob – Bokmålnno – Nynorsk |
Glottolog | norw1258 |
Linguasphere | 52-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). | |
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").
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.