EIN SONDERFALL DER SPRACHREVITALISIERUNG – DAS NEUNORWEGISCHE
A SPECIAL CASE OF THE LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION: THE NEW NORWEGIAN

Author(s): Attila Kelemen
Subject(s): Historical Linguistics
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: Old Norse; Ivar Aasen; Landsmål; Nynorsk; Norwegian dialects; language revitalization;
Summary/Abstract: When the Norwegians gained their independence from Denmark in 1814, they had no longer a written language due to the fact that the Old Norse written language had died out in the Middle Ages. They could choose between two solutions: either to Norwegianize the existing – 400 years as official language yielding to Danish – or to build up an entirely new one. Linguist Ivar Aasen created the Landsmål (today Nynorsk ‘New Norwegian’) on the basis of the West Norwegian dialects. This paper argues why the appearance of New Norwegian can be regarded as a special case of language revitalization.

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