Norwegian language struggle

The Norwegian language conflict (målstriden, språkstriden or sprogstriden) is an ongoing controversy within Norwegian culture and politics related to the written versions of the Norwegian language. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to Danish rule. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban, Norway's literary history, dialect versus standard language, spelling reform, and orthography.

In the United Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway (1536–1814), the official language was Danish. The urban Norwegian upper class spoke "dansk-norsk", Dano-Norwegian, a form of Danish with Norwegian pronunciation and other minor local differences while the majority of the population spoke their local and regional dialects. After the two countries separated in 1814, Dano-Norwegian remained the sole official language until 1885.

In the early 1840s, the young linguist Ivar Aasen traveled rural areas collecting examples of the words and grammar used there. He assembled a Norwegian language based on dialects little affected by Danish and published his first grammar and dictionary of the Norwegian people's language (Folkespråk), in 1848 and 1850 respectively. Both he and other authors wrote texts in their own dialects from around this time and in the decades following.

The Norwegian language is a North Germanic language. Dano-Norwegian evolved gradually to incorporate Norwegian forms. Aasen's people's language became established. Parliament decided in 1885 that the two forms of written Norwegian were to be equally official. Both went through some name-changes until 1929 when parliament decided that the one originally based on Danish should be called Bokmål (literally "book language") and the one based on Norwegian dialects should be called Nynorsk ("new Norwegian").

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