Language Reform

The Norwegian Language Reform, or the Language Reform, for short, is a language reform initiated after the separation from Denmark in 1808. The debate led to a long period with authors writing in more or less two standard norms, namely Landsmål and Riksmål. The debate is still ongoing, but already by the beginning of the 1900s, the Norwegian state had shown its support for riksmål with a strict etymological focus, and had created a standard based on Danish. The standard norm has been criticised for being a norwegianised Danish, and today though based on Danish, has two standards. The reform states that the official Norwegian language of Scandinavia is Riksnorsk, or National Norwegian. Today the Norwegian and Nordic Language Council states that there currently is two standards accepted, Riksnorsk, and Moderat Riksmål (Contemporary Riksmål). Riksnorsk is accepted both written and spoken, whilst Contemporary Riksmål is accepted only spoken. The Contemporary Riksmål is closer to the dialects spoken by Eastern Norwegians, whilst the Riksnorsk, is closer to Danish both in syntax and lexicon. The Language Council does not recognise Landsmål as a national language, but several schools situated in Western Norway offer classes in their dialectal variants, and use Landsmål as a de facto written norm for their dialects. Several authors and politicians also use Landsmål, alas, not formally.

"Hard" consonants and "soft" consonants
The Danish language is knows for its word final and intervocalic voicing of consonants, though in most Norwegian dialects, including the "cultivated everyday speech", which is the Danish language with Norwegian pronunciation, some Norwegian vocabulary, and some minor grammatic differences, spoken during the Kalmar Union.

Thus words like tabe, løpe, liden, rod, lagen and bruge, would be written tape, løpe, liten, rot, laken and bruke.

Silent letters
In written Danish, words, containing silent letters not etymylogically backed, like faae, ere, and mand is written få, er and mann. It should be noted that the nd in Danish is often used even in words where the etymology does not include an nd, whereas in Norwegian nd only occurs in words where it is etymologically backed up. Thus words like sende, blind and holde is written the same in Norwegian and Danish.

The endings -ive (pronounced /iː/ or /iə/), -ife (also pronounced /iː/ or /iə/), -ede (pronounced /eː/ or /eɛ/) and -yde (pronounced /yː/ or /yə/) are realised as a long vowels in Standard Riksmål, but centred (/iː, yː, uː, oː/ as [iə, yə, uə, oə]) or opened (/eː, øː, oː/ as [eɛ, øœ, oɑ]) diphthongs in contemporary Riksmål. Thus, gife (Old Norse gefa), blive (Middle Low German blīven), bede (ON biðja) and byde (ON bjóða) is the correct spellings and pronounced /ʝiː, bliː, beː and byː/ respectively.

The intervocalic g occurs in some words, and is a silent letter. Examples include kuge (force, ON kúga) and buge (arch, ON bogi). Similarly there is the intervocalic f, found in for instance hafe (to have, ON hafa), tufe (small hightened bump, ON þufá) and dufe (dove, ON dúfa), but also in the dialectal hufe (head, ON hǫfuð). An even rarer consonant is the silent intervocalic k, is the words take (to take, ON taka)

Double consonant
Danish does not allow double consonants word-finally, where as Norwegian allowes it. The Norwegian language however allows double consonants word-finally, but also Norwegian allows double consonants before inflexional and derivational endings, beginning in a consonant and in compounding. Thus it is spelt al - alt - alle - altid in Danish but all - allt - alle - alltid in Norwegian.

Diphthongs
The diphthongs /æɪ/ and /œʏ/ is spelt ej and øj in Danish, but eg and øg in Norwegian. Thus in Danish the spellings would be vej, sej, høj and løj (lied), where the Norwgian spellings would be veg, seg, høg and løg. Though it should be noted that some words in Norwegian spells the diphthongs as øig or eig in words like heige (to encourage), leige (ON leiga) and bøige (ON beygja), as well as in leid (ON leiðr; sad, tired). Some word loanwords keep their original spelling.

The diphthong /æʉ/ is normally written aug, thus taug (rope), haug (pile), but saud (sheep, ON sauðr) and daud (slack, ON dauðr). The aug spelling is to differentiate it from the /ag/ phoneme like hagen (the garden) vs. haugen (the pile). /æʉ/ is however only spelt au word-medially, except for inflexionally, thus taus, forbause, but haugen.

The Phonemes /ʂ/ and /ç/
In Danish the phonemes /ʂ/ and /ç/ is not used, or if used allophones of other phonemes, whilst in Norwegian these happens more frequently. Despite the higher occurrence in Norwegian, the Danish spelling has been retained unless the etymology questions the spelling. Thus words like gemme, kær and skønt are spelt the same in Danish and Norwegian despite the differences in pronunciation.

Loanwords
Danish and Norwegian both tend to retain the foreign spelling of the loanwords, though Norwegian more so than Danish, thus bureau, chauffør (chauffeur in Norweigan), information, garage, centrum, jalousi (jalousie in Norwegian) and zone has retained their original spelling.

Consistency
The Norwegian spelling reform is a systematic reform, thus several changes was implemented, and got rid of spelling differences which has the same etymology but different spellings, such as speil (mirror) and seil (sail) that differs from snegl (snail) and negl (nail), but is now all written spegl, segl, snegl and negl. And veps, valp and verken is now spelt hveps, hvalp and hverken to fit with hvilken and hval. The hveps variant is based on consistency, rather than etymology.

Æ-removal
The spelling reform has gotten rid of the letter æ in Norse-derived words, but kept it in loanwords, thus words like hær, klær and bær is now spelt her, kler and ber. The reason for this is that the sound /æ/ is an allophone of /e/ infront of /r/. (Note that it is still retained in a few words like hæ and bæ as the pronunciation would not be clear without).

Political Correctness
The reform has in later years corrected spellings of names and countries to reflect the correct spelling, so that Kazakhstan and Uyghur is now spelt Kazakstan and Uigur, this is to get rid of the kh and gh spellings, which is a result of the transcription system implemented during the Soviet era.

Final -f
Words with final /f/ in Old Norse has retained the spelling in Norwegian in all positions, whilst only in some positions in Danish. Thus af, liv and gav in Danish, but af, lif and gaf in Norwegian.

Words of different etymology
Some words have entered the language from different languages, thus politique and politisch are both derived from the greek word politika, but one derived from German and the other from French. In 2021 the Norwegian and Nordic Language Council (Det Norske Språkråd ofer Norsk og Fellesnordisk) said they wished to only keep one of the etymologies, thus either keeping the French politique and politisque or the German politik and politisch.