Alternate Names: Norsk
Status Notes: De facto national language.
Genealogy:
Demographics: 4,640,000 in Norway. Population total all countries: 4,741,780.
Language Development: Fully developed. Bible: 1904–1985.
Typology: SVO.
Spoken In: Norway
Writing System: Latin
Nation of Origin: Norway
Other Comments: Norwegian has 2 written standards, both of which are assigned codes in the ISO 639-3 standard: Bokmål Norwegian (nob) and Nynorsk Norwegian (nno). It draws lexicon and syntax from both West Scandinavian and East Scandinavian speech varieties. Bokmål differs from Riksmål in genders, lexicon, counting system, using diphthongs versus single vowels, etc. While Norwegian is here classified as East Scandinavian, the two written standards Nynorsk and Bokmal display characteristics of both West and East Scandinavian, respectively. Nynorsk, used by a minority of Norwegians, is West Scandinavian; Bokmål, the written standard of the majority of the population, is East Scandinavian.