Norwegian

Primary language family: Indo-European

Subfamily: Germanic

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Endonymic glossonym: Norsk
Exonymic glossonyms: Norwegian, Norska, Norwegisch, Noors, Norvégien, Noruego, Norueguês, Norvegese, Норвежский язык (Norvezhskiy yazyk)

Approximate number of native speakers = 5,320,000

 

The modern flag of Norway

Distinct features

• Norway is bordered to the south by Denmark and to the east by Sweden. Fluency in Norwegian facilitates understanding of most Danish and Swedish.
• Norway has a long mainland coastline of  28,953km (excluding the islands). For comparison, Australia has a mainland coastline of 35,877km. Norway has an unusually isolating landscape, with many mountains and fjords. With this reduction in language exchange between communities, Norwegian has differentiated into countless distinct forms.
• There are two forms of standard Norwegian: Nynorsk (New Norwegian), and Bokmål (Book language).