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In reply to the discussion: Winter Temperatures and Norwegians: [View all]Diclotican
(5,095 posts)KamaAina
That is correct - we have a habit on making new languages now and then - specially in the 1800s, when we kind of was waking up from the long sleep we had been in since the 1380s, the "right" language was a issue of national pride - and not to say a source of conflicts between the people on the country-side and the people living in the City's
And it is correct as you say it - the dialects was very important in making a new language - Nynorsk or New Norwegian was based on dialects from parts of Norway - close to the language most people spoke at the time. Bokmål, the language of the books, if I have to translate it to a halting english, was used by most writers, and in school.. And is still the most used Norwegian written and spoken language in Norway.. Nynorsk and Bokmål is the two official Norwegian languages who also is learned in school.. In the north of Norway they have also sami, the language of the sami people, but in most of Norway, it is first and foremost Bokmål and Nynorsk who is used.. I use Bokmål when I write or read Norwegian by the way .. I can read nynorsk - but I do have some problems writing it...
Riksmål, is a rather conservative written language - most used by the old upper classes in Norway (the little what we had left after 500 year with a Union between Norway and Denmark - and then 91 year with Sweden).. It is for the most part older people who use Riksmål today - and it is little conservative in its writing... Of current politician's or people who still hold some un-official office of sorts n Norway, I believe Kåre Wiloch (a former prime minister) is the closest you can come to a man who still use Riksmål as his spoken and written language.. (he was also prime minister in a conservative government, even though I belive he would have been reconed as a liberal in todays United States of America...
My guess, is that the spoken language (and written language) by the emigrants to Minnesota and other parts where many Norwegian emigrated to, would have been more like a collection of bokmål and nynorsk, rather than riksmål.. As most of them would have been from the lower classes in Norway - small farmers or even from many who was not able to own property at their own at all.. It was a system called "husmen" where they had to work on a farmers land, for a house - maybe a plate of land - and some pigs and a cow or two... It was often a very hard and poor life - and many who had the means, or was lucky to get the ticket paid for them - emigrated from Norway to the new world... And many ended up building up farms in States like Minnesota and so one... For them it was like coming to paradise, the had land, and had the ability to do things with the farm land, that they never would have had the chance to do on their own back home.. Most of them got wealthy to - many got really rich compared to what they had been able to do in Norway.. An un-official sensus from 2008 says it was more than 9 million americans, of norwigian ancestory living in US - In Norwya it is little over 5 million in all... More than 800.000 norwigians emigrated from Norway to the US between 1840 and 1914. And then some emigrated after WW1 - in the years between the wars - and some emigrated after ww2 to...
Diclotican