Our friend Dave Lull sent me the following article from Granta, “The Other Norwegian,” by Damion Searls. It’s about Norway’s two official languages, a subject of compelling interest to almost everyone.
Nynorsk and Bokmål are both ‘Norwegian’. They are used by roughly 10–15 and 80–85 percent of Norwegian speakers, respectively. They are spelled slightly differently but are mutually intelligible, with almost identical grammar and vocabulary. The case of Norway is unlike that of multilingual countries with actually different languages: Belgium’s French and Dutch, Canada’s English and French, India’s twenty-two officially recognized languages. A good analogy to Bokmål and Nynorsk might be Northern and Southern US English, if Southlish had an official spelling system, dictionary, academy, and language activists. But it doesn’t, which is why Americans speak with Northern or Southern ‘accents’. So what is a minority language that is nearly the same as the majority language? What is Nynorsk?
Damion Searles is, of course, a person I hate, as he’s making a living as a Norwegian translator while I fade into the sunset. Still, if you’re curious about Norway’s peculiar language situation, the article’s pretty good.
