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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Norwegian
The
city of Bergen has an impressive museum dedicated
to life during the Hanseatic era. (Here the apprentices’
dormitory.) It was in and from Bergen and a few other
Norwegian ports that the Middle Saxon language
exerted
strong influences mostly on Norwegian Danish
and indirectly on most non-urban dialects
of Norway.
Language Information: “Norwegian” is
a label for basically two languages, both of them officially recognized in
Norway: Dano-Norwegian (Bokmål “Book Language,”
“Literary Language”) and Neo-Norwegian (Nynorsk, formerly also known as Landsmål “Country Language”). Dano-Norwegian
(Bokmål): The
majority (85–90%)
of Norway’s population and of ethnic Norwegians elsewhere
uses Dano-Norwegian. It developed from Danish varieties with Norwegian substrates
and influences used in Norway under Danish rule from the fourteenth century until
1905. The official name of these earlier varieties was Riksmål (“Language of
the Realm,” “National Language”). After Norway’s full national independence,
Dano-Norwegian acquired more and more influences from indigenous dialects and
thus lost many of the more strikingly Danish features, including lexical, grammatical
and orthographic features. It might be argued to be a mixture of Eastern Scandinavian
and Western Scandinavian, since Danish belongs to the eastern group (as do Swedish,
Dalecarlian/Älvdalsmål and Scanian/Skånska) and indigenous Norwegian belongs
to the western group (as does Jamtlandish/Jamska). In other words, it is an East Scandinavian language with West Scandinavian influences. Neo-Norwegian
(Nynorsk, Landsmål): In
the 19th century, the philologist and lexicographer Ivar Andreas Aasen (1813–1896),
collected dialectical Norwegian material and began a movement that sought to
reestablish the actual Norwegian language by constructing a standard variety
on the basis of dialects that had absorbed fewer Danish influences. This
largely artificial variety is used mostly in literature and oratory, existing
side by side with the actual spoken, largely West Scandinavian dialects. Essentially,
Neo-Norwegian is a West Scandinavian language with East Scandinavian influences.
There
have been attempts at instituting a more strictly prescribed Neo-Norwegian
variety
called Høynorsk (“High Norwegian”), but most writers use a less rigidly structured
form of Neo-Norwegian and allow their local dialects to show through in their
writing.
Like Swedish,
both Norwegian languages are tonal: they have two phonemic tones, one falling
tone and one contour tone. However, these tones are not marked in writing.
The
Norwegian government has instituted several language reforms in part aimed
at bringing the two Norwegian
languages closer together and even attempted to
unite them under the label Samnorsk (“Common Norwegian”), but particularly this
latter attempt has met with much opposition, and ethnic Norwegian bilingualism
continues.
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