Modern Norwegian () is the

Norwegian language Norwegian ( ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelli ...

that emerged after the

Middle Norwegian Middle Norwegian ( Norwegian Bokmål: ; Norwegian Nynorsk: , ) is a form of the Norwegian language that was spoken from 1350 up to 1550 and was the last phase of Norwegian in its original state, before Danish replaced Norwegian as the official w ...

transition period (1350–1536) until and including today. The transition to Modern Norwegian is usually dated to 1525, or 1536, the year of the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...

and the beginning of the kingdoms of

Denmark–Norway Denmark–Norway (Danish language, Danish and Norwegian language, Norwegian: ) is a term for the 16th-to-19th-century multi-national and multi-lingual real unionFeldbæk 1998:11 consisting of the Kingdom of Denmark, the Kingdom of Norway (includ ...

(1537–1814). It can be further divided into ''Early Modern Norway'' (1536-1848) until the separation from Denmark, and ''Newer Modern Norwegian'' from then to now. In contrast to

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

, Modern Norwegian has simplified

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

s and a more fixed syntax. Old Norse vocabulary is to a considerable degree substituted by

Low German Low German is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language variety, language spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide. "Low" ...

, and this is the main reason why Modern Norwegian, together with contemporary Norwegian in general, Danish and Swedish, is no longer mutually intelligible with Insular Nordic ( Icelandic and Faroese), except from some Nynorsk/Høgnorsk and dialect users to a lesser extent. While Modern Norwegian is a linguistic term with a specific historical meaning, contemporary Norwegian also includes the

Dano-Norwegian Dano-Norwegian (Danish language, Danish and ) was a Koine language, koiné/mixed language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union between the Denmark–Norway, Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway (1 ...

koiné dialect from

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

, that evolved into ''Standard Østnorsk'' ( Standard East Norwegian) and the related official written standard ''

Bokmål Bokmål () (, ; ) is one of the official written standards for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is by far the most used written form of Norwegian today, as it is adopted by 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. There is no cou ...

''. ''Standard Østnorsk'' is spoken by a large and rapidly growing minority of Norwegians in East Norway, and Bokmål is by far the most widely used written language, even among users of Modern Norwegian dialects.

References

Norwegian language {{Germanic-lang-stub