Middle Norwegian (

Norwegian Bokmål Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe *Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway *Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including the ...

: ; Norwegian Nynorsk: , ) is a form of the

Norwegian language Norwegian ( no, norsk, links=no ) is a North Germanic language 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 intelligible local and r ...

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 written language of what is now

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

Language history

The

Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

came to Norway in 1349, killing over 60% of the population. This probably precipitated the current process of language development. The language in Norway after 1350 until about 1550 is generally referred to as Middle Norwegian. During this period the language went through several changes: morphological paradigms were simplified, including the loss of

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

s and the levelling of personal inflection on verbs. An epenthetic "e" gradually appeared before the nominative ending from Old Norse to ease pronunciation. This made terms such as change to . The -r disappeared from the language all together, and so did the epenthetic in most dialects, but some still retain this vowel. A vowel reduction also took place, in some dialects, including in parts of Norway, reducing many final unstressed vowels in a word to a common "e". The phonemic inventory also underwent changes. The dental fricatives, represented by the letters þ and ð, disappeared from Norwegian, either by merging with their equivalent

stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), li ...

s, represented by t and d, respectively, or by being lost altogether.

Danicisation of the written language

During the 15th century, Middle Norwegian gradually ceased to be used as a written language. At the end of the 16th century,

Christian IV of Denmark Christian IV (12 April 1577 – 28 February 1648) was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Holstein and Schleswig from 1588 until his death in 1648. His reign of 59 years, 330 days is the longest of Danish monarchs and Scandinavian mona ...

(1577–1648) decided to revise and translate

Magnus VI of Norway Magnus Haakonsson ( non, Magnús Hákonarson, no, Magnus Håkonsson, label= Modern Norwegian; 1 (or 3) May 1238 – 9 May 1280) was King of Norway (as Magnus VI) from 1263 to 1280 (junior king from 1257). One of his greatest achievements was the ...

's 13th century '' Landslov'' "Country Law" into Danish, since it was originally written in

Old West Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

. In 1604 the revised version of the law was introduced. The translation of this law marks the final transition to Danish as the administrative language in Norway.

References

External links

Dinara, Alieva. (2013) The adnominal genitive constructs in middle norwegian (in norwegian).
Norwegian language Languages attested from the 14th century {{Germanic-lang-stub