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Dano-Norwegian and New-Norwegian
Dano-Norwegian and New-Norwegian were both developed throughout the 19th century after the nation had gained its independence from Denmark. However, they did not get their current names, "Bokmal" and "nynorsk" until 1929.
New-Norwegian has always been the lesser used written form. It had its all time high in 1944 when 34% of the school districts used it as their main written language.
To ensure that New-Norwegian is not undermined, the government has come up with a list of regulations:
All school books printed in Norway must be published in both languages. .
At least 25% of the programs shown on the broadcasting channel NRK must be in New Norwegian. This includes subtitling of movies, narrators, radio reporters etc.
At Least 25% of all the official documents must be written in New-Norwegian. .
All persons working in official positions must have command of both languages. A person who sends a Letter to say, the municipality, is entitled to get a reply in the same language that his Letter was written in.
There are specified interest organizations for New-Norwegian and Dano-Norwegian that make sure these regulations are being with-held.
One single man created New-Norwegian. His name was Ivar Aasen and he was a farmer's son with a genius mind for languages. He traveled around in most of the southern parts of Norway and listened to people speak. Through his thorough research he found grammatical patterns in the dialects which he used when he created New-Norwegian.
Dano-Norwegian came from, as the name suggests, Danish. The Danish language was the written language of Norway for centuries.
The upper class, which was used to writing Danish, gave their support to the Dano-Norwegian language, looked down at New-Norwegian claiming it was a peasant's language making a mockery of "fine Norwegian".
Those pro New- Norwegian and against Dano-Norwegian augmented that the language wasn't "Norwegian enough".
In 1885 the two languages were made equal; both would be official written forms of Norwegian.
During the beginning of the 20th century spelling reforms made the two languages more alike, and many words were accepted in both languages. A special arrangement was made: Some words could be spelt in several different ways (sola or solen). One way of spelling was made compulsory for schools to teach and school book writers to use, and the other, a so-called bracket form, was allowed for everyone else to use as they wised. The students could freely choose the way of spelling that was closer to their dialect. Though the spelling and the words have changed a bit, this is still the reality in Norwegian schools today.
All reforms must be 'approved of by the parliament. From two days in 1917, when the debate in the parliament was particularly heated, there is a 125 pages report.
A radical reform was put forward in 1938. In 1940, when the Second World War reached Norway, the debate naturally stopped. The Nazi government launched their own spelling reform which all the newspapers had to use. The schools partially sabotaged the reform.
One result of the war was that the citizens united a bit more and finally agreed that both versions were just as "Norwegian" as the other (during the war all the illegal papers had been printed in Dano-Norwegian). In the early 1950s efforts were made to make one written language.
These linguistic rapprochements came to a sudden holt in 1952. That year many schools started using text books made after the radical spelling reform of '38. A lot of parents thought the reform ruined the language, and formed a protest. The parental protest began in the Oslo area and then spread to the rest of the country. Those who protested were mainly users of Dano-Norwegian. Close to 100,000 persons signed a petition against the '38-reform that year. The parents went further in their protest the year after: they corrected all their children's school books to the previous spelling standard.
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