Samnorsk is a written standard of 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 was proposed between the 1930s and the 1950s as a way to bridge the gap between the existing varieties. In the 20th century, Norway had two different standards: Riksmål (a variety of modern-day

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 ...

) and Landsmål (a variety of modern-day

Nynorsk Nynorsk (; ) is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (''Landsmål''), parallel to the Da ...

). A spelling reform in 1917 was conducted under the direction of king Haakon VII. This was the first attempt to combine both Bokmål and Nynorsk at that time. In 1951, the Norwegian Parliament decided to create a language council that was supposed to work with getting Bokmål and Nynorsk closer to each other. But the debate became heated and controversial, mainly because words in Riksmål were supposed to become more "Norwegianized", angering a lot of those who supported the more conservative Riksmål spelling standard. What was optional in the 1917 reform became mandatory in the 1938 reform. Among the variations was the use of -''a'' in definite articles of feminine words (such as ''melket'' becoming ''mjølka'').

References

{{reflist Language varieties and styles

See also

References