Sunday, February 19, 2012

Stuff I Did Not Know: Norwegian

Norway has two official languages: "Bokmål"  ("book language) and "Nynorsk"("new Norwegian").    There are at least two other written forms without official status: "Riksmål" ("national lanaguage") and Høgnorsk ("high Norwegian"). There are many local spoken dialects. There is no official elite standard speech, though "standard østnorsk" ("standard east Norse") is the form usually taught to foreigners.  Mainland Norway covers about 148746 square miles, about the size of Montana.  It has a population of 4.8 million, about the same as Alabama.

1 comment:

The New York Crank said...

Phew! Thanks for the populations statistics. I was about to ask how a nation with a population of six people could have nine languages?

Crankily,
The New York Crank