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Dano-Norwegian

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Dano-Norwegian (Danish and ) was a koiné/mixed language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union between the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway (1536/1537–1814). It is from this koiné that the unofficial written standard Riksmål and the official written standard Bokmål developed. Bokmål is now the most widely used written standard of contemporary Norwegian.

Wikidata facts

Instance of
koiné language
Subclass of
North Germanic
Country
Norway
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Encyclopedic overview

5 sections
Contents
  • History
  • As a spoken language
  • As a written language
  • See also
  • Notes

Dano-Norwegian (Danish and ) was a koiné/mixed language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union between the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway (1536/1537–1814). It is from this koiné that the unofficial written standard Riksmål and the official written standard Bokmål developed. Bokmål is now the most widely used written standard of contemporary Norwegian.

==History== ===As a spoken language=== During the period when Norway was in a union with Denmark, Norwegian writing died out and Danish became the language of the literate class in Norway. At first, Danish was used primarily in writing; later it came to be spoken on formal or official occasions; and by the time Norway's ties with Denmark were severed in 1814, a Dano-Norwegian vernacular often called the "cultivated everyday speech" had become the mother tongue of parts of the urban elite. This new Dano-Norwegian koiné could be described as Danish with Norwegian pronunciation, some Norwegian vocabulary, and some minor grammatical differences from Danish.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Dano-Norwegian” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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