Norway Languages

Norwegian is the official and the widely spoken language in Norway. The language is spoken all over the country. Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic family of languages. Norwegian is closely related to Swedish and Danish, all which are descendants of Old Norse. Norwegian has two writing standards, Bokmal and Nynorsk. Bokmal is used officially whereas Nynorsk is more common in casual contexts. The Norwegian alphabet has got 29 letters. The letters c, q, w, x, and z are only used in loanwords.

95% of the people living in Norway use Norwegian as their first language. In 2014, there were approximately 5 million Norwegian native speakers. Apart from Norway, there are native Norwegian mostly located in places like Minnesota and North Dakota. As per the studies carried out in 2013, approximately 4.5 million people out of the 5.1 million Norwegian had the ability to sustain a conversation in English.

The largest part of Norwegian vocabulary is attributed to the Old Norse. Most of the loanwords used in Norwegian have their origin from the Middle Low German. Currently, Norwegian has been borrowing vocabulary from the English language. Some of the English words used in Norwegian include bag, juice, catering, and rapper. The language has also been borrowing heavily from French, Danish, and Swedish. Some of the loanwords are Norwegianised in order to match the spelling rules of Norwegian. Norwegian nouns have been categorized into three genders, feminine, masculine and neuter, like most Indo-European languages.

Apart from Norwegian, there are other minority languages spoken in the country. A small number of people in Norwegian still speak sami-languages such as Kven and Finish. A large number of Norwegian natives can sustain a conversation in English. There are also approximately ,7000 people living in Norway who are native speakers of the Romani language, an Indo-European language.

This page was last modified on May 1st, 2018

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Published on 2019-11-06


Capital	Oslo
Languages	Bokmal Norwegian (official), Nynorsk Norwegian (official), small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities
Ethnic Groups	Norwegian 94.4% (includes Sami, about 60,000), other European 3.6%, other 2% (2007 est.)
Religion	Church of Norway (Evangelical Lutheran - official) 82.1%, other Christian 3.9%, Muslim 2.3%, Roman Catholic 1.8%, other 2.4%, unspecified 7.5% (2011 est.)
Government	Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Independance	7 June 1905 (Norway declared the union with Sweden dissolved); 26 October 1905 (Sweden agreed to the repeal of the union)
Area	323,802.00 km²
Water Area	19,520.00 km²
Land Area	304,282.00 km²
Population	5,265,158.00 Most Norweigans live in the south where the climate is more mild and there is better connectivity to mainland Europe; population clusters are found all along the North Sea coast in the southwest, and Skaggerak in the southeast; the interior areas of the north remain sparsely populated
Location	Northern Europe, bordering the North Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, west of Sweden
No. Bordering Countries	3
Bordering Countries	Finland 709 km, Sweden 1,666 km, Russia 191 km
GDP(PPP)	$365,000,000,000.00 (USD)
GDP (Per Capita)	$69,300.00 (USD)
Export Partners	Its major export partners are the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Export Commodities	Its main exports are petroleum and petroleum products, machinery and equipment, metals, and chemicals.
Import Partners	Its major import partners are Sweden, Germany, and China.
Import Commodities	Its major imports include machinery and equipment, chemicals, metals, and foodstuffs.
Climate	Temperate along coast, modified by North Atlantic Current; colder interior with increased precipitation and colder summers; rainy year-round on west coast
Terrain	Glaciated; mostly high plateaus and rugged mountains broken by fertile valleys; small, scattered plains; coastline deeply indented by fjords; arctic tundra in north
Learn More	Norway

Norway Languages

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