Norway

Norwegian is the official language of Norway. It has about 4.3 million speakers and is the mother tongue of most Norwegians.

In Norway, they have two official forms of Norwegian: BokmŒl (Dano-Norwegian) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian). By law, these two forms have equal status.

BokmŒl is based on Old Norwegian and Old Danish. It was called RiksmŒl (Standard Norwegian) until 1929.

Nynorsk was created in the 19th century on the basis of several Norwegian dialects spoken in the western parts of the country. Nynorsk was called landsmŒl (Country Norwegian) prior to 1929.

Nowadays, Norwegian is the language that most closely resembles Swedish, in pronunciation, inflection, vocabulary, and syntax.

Norwegian, together with Icelandic and Faroese, belongs to the West Scandinavian branch of the North Germanic language group, which is a part of the Indo-European language family.