Høgnorsk (; meaning ''High Norwegian'') is a term for varieties 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 ...
from
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 ...
that reject most of the official reforms that have been introduced since the creation of . Høgnorsk typically accepts the initial reforms that, among other things, removed certain silent letters of
etymological origin, while keeping most of the grammar intact.
Torleiv Hannaas is often credited for introducing the term in an article in 1922. He used it analogously to
High German (), pointing out that
Ivar Aasen, the creator of
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 ...
orthography, had especially valued the dialects of the mountainous areas of middle and western Norway, as opposed to the dialects of the lowlands of eastern Norway, which Hannaas called (Flat Norwegian, like ).
The written High Norwegian language is a tradition originating from the first version of the New Norwegian written language (then called ), as it was built by Ivar Aasen and later used by classical New Norwegian authors as
Aasmund Olavsson Vinje,
Arne Garborg,
Olav Nygard and
Olav H. Hauge.
The movement grew out of opposition to the official policy which aimed at leveling out the differences between and the other main variety of Norwegian language, . Reforms to this end were carried through in 1938 and 1959. Initially there was considerable
resistance to these reforms, but the resulting standard is now widely accepted. is currently supported by
Ivar Aasen-sambandet and the activists behind Målmannen, but has relatively few active users.
The basis for the High Norwegian language direction is a wish to preserve the New Norwegian written language as an independent language, free of the strong influence from that today's ''Nynorsk'' has.
References
External links
''
Articles in Høgnorsk'' on the ''
Nynorsk edition'' of
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
association promoting Høgnorsk.
Mållekken a Høgnorsk
wiki.
Høgnorskportalen sambandet.no a resource page with hundreds of articles written in Høgnorsk.
Tidskriftet Målmannen a magazine promoting the Høgnorsk language.
Norsk Formlæra a høgnorsk grammar.
Norsk Ordlista a høgnorsk dictionary.
Norwegian orthography
Nynorsk
Linguistic purism
{{Nordic-lang-stub