Cover not available
Part of
Germanic Heritage Languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change
Edited by Janne Bondi Johannessen † and Joseph C. Salmons
[Studies in Language Variation 18] 2015
► pp. 299–322

On Two Myths of the Norwegian Language in America

Is it Old-Fashioned? Is it Approaching the Written Bokmål Standard?

| University of Oslo
| University of Oslo
The article discusses two claims about Heritage Norwegian in the American Midwest. One is that the Norwegian-speaking descendants of Norwegian immigrants speak an ‘archaic’ form of Norwegian. The other is that their language approaches the written Norwegian Bokmål standard, i.e., has moved away from the dialects spoken by original immigrants. Evidence from the lexicon and grammar help answer the questions in the title. The answer to the first question is partly positive, depending on what aspects of language are focussed on, while the answer to the second one is negative.
Keywords: Bokmål, comparisons with European Norwegian, grammar, heritage Norwegian, vocabulary
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 20 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.18.14joh
References
Aasen, Ivar
1864 Norsk grammatik. Oslo: Cammermeyers Forlag.Google Scholar
Åfarli, Tor Anders
1986 “Absence of V2 Effects in a Dialect of Norwegian.” In Scandinavian Syntax, ed. by Östen Dahl and Anders Holmberg, 8–20. Stockholm: University of Stockholm, Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Annear, Lucas and Kristin Speth
This volume. “Maintaining a Multilingual Repertoire: The Lexicon of American Norwegian.”
Boas, Hans C.
2009 “Case Loss in Texas German: The Influence of Semantic and Pragmatic Factors.” In The Role of Semantic, Pragmatic and Discourse Factors in the Development of Case, ed. by Jóhanna Barðdal and Shobhana Chelliah, 347–373. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eyþórsson, Þórhallur, Janne Bondi Johannessen, Signe Laake and Tor A. Åfarli
2012 “Dative Case in Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian: Preservation and Non-Preservation.” Nordic Journal of Linguistics 35(3): 219–249. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Håberg, Live
2010 Den preproprielle artikkelen i norsk. Ei undersøking av namneartiklar i Kvæfjord, Gausdal og Voss. Oslo, Norway: University of Oslo MA thesis.Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar
1953 The Norwegian Language in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
1966 Language Conflict and Language Planning. The Case of Modern Norwegian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hjelde, Arnstein
This volume. “Changes in a Norwegian Dialect in America.”
Holthe, Ane
2011 Nynorsk i motvind: Skolemålsutviklingen i Gausdal etter 1950. Oslo, Norway: University of Oslo MA thesis.Google Scholar
Jenshus, Gunnar
1986 Fronsmålet. Vinstra: Fron historielag.Google Scholar
Johannessen, Janne Bondi
2012 “Har ru bursdag? Da ska re feires! Om isoglossene for r-initielle funksjonsord.” In Fra holtijar til holting – språkhistoriske og språksosiologiske artikler til Arne Torp på 70-årsdagen, ed. by Unn Røyneland and Hans Olav Enger, 183–195. Oslo: Novus forlag.Google Scholar
Johannessen, Janne Bondi, Joel Priestley, Kristin Hagen, Tor Anders Åfarli and Øystein Alexander Vangsnes
2009 “The Nordic Dialect Corpus – An Advanced Research Tool.” In Proceedings of the 17th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA 2009. NEALT Proceedings Series 4, ed. by Kristiina Jokinen and Eckhard Bick, 73–80. Tartu: Tartu University Library (electronic publication).Google Scholar
Johannessen, Janne Bondi and Signe Laake
2012 “Østnorsk som fellesdialekt i Midtvesten.” Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift 30(2): 365–380.Google Scholar
2011 “Den amerikansk-norske dialekten i Midtvesten.” In Studier i dialektologi och sociolingvistik. Föredrag vid Nionde nordiska dialektologkonferensen i Uppsala 18–20 augusti 2010. Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi 116, ed. by Lars-Erik Edlund, Lennart Elmevik and Maj Reinhammar, 177–186. Uppsala: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur.Google Scholar
Forthcoming. “Eastern Norwegian as a Common Norwegian Dialect in the American Midwest.” Journal of Language Contact.
Larsson, Ida, Sofia Tingsell and Maia Andreasson
This volume. “Variation and Change in American Swedish.”
Lie, Svein
1984 “Noen abstraksjonsproblemer i fonologien.” Norskrift 42: 1–11.Google Scholar
Nordgård, Torbjørn
1988 “Omkring ordstilling i hv-spørsmål i norske dialekter.” Skriftserie fra Institutt for fonetikk og lingvistikk 33(A): 26–37.Google Scholar
Papazian, Erik and Botolv Helleland
2005 Norsk Talemål. Kristiansand: Høyskoleforlaget.Google Scholar
Putnam, Michael
2003 “The Prepositional Case in German-American Dialects.” Focus on German Studies 10: 207–224. [URL]Google Scholar
Rognes, Stig
2011 V2, V3, V4 (and maybe even more). The Syntax of Questions in the Rogaland Dialects of Norwegian. Oslo, Norway: University of Oslo MA thesis.Google Scholar
Sandøy, Helge
1996 “Somme – eit semantisk skilje i norske dialektar.” Nordica Bergensia 9(96): 90–102.Google Scholar
Skjekkeland, Martin
1997 Dei norske dialektane – Tradisjonelle særdrag i jamføring med skriftmåla. Kristiansand: Høyskoleforlaget.Google Scholar
Smits, Caroline and Jaap van Marle
This volume. “On the Decrease of Language Norms in a Disintegrating Language.”
Storm, Johan
1920 Ordlister over lyd- og formlæren i norske bygdemaal; udgivne ved Olai Skulerud. Kristiania: Dybwad (commission).Google Scholar
Torp, Arne
1973 “Om genitivsomskrivninger og -s-genitiv i norsk.” Maal og Minne3–4: 125–150.Google Scholar
Vestad, Jon Peder
2002 Gausdalsmålet. Gausdal: Gausdal dialekt- og mållag.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit Richardsen and Øystein Alexander Vangsnes
2005 “Wh-Questions, V2, and the Left Periphery of Three Norwegian Dialect Types.” Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 8: 117–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar

URLs

Lexicographical Bokmål Corpus [URL]
Nordic Dialect Corpus [URL]
Oslo Corpus of Tagged Norwegian Texts, the Nynorsk Part [URL]
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Hjelde, Arnstein
2015. Changes in a Norwegian Dialect in America. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 283 ff. DOI logo
Johannessen, Janne Bondi
2015. Attrition in an American Norwegian Heritage Language Speaker. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 46 ff. DOI logo
Kinn, Kari
2021. Split possession and definiteness marking in American Norwegian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 44:2 ► pp. 182 ff. DOI logo
Lohndal, Terje & Marit Westergaard
2016. Grammatical Gender in American Norwegian Heritage Language: Stability or Attrition?. Frontiers in Psychology 7 DOI logo
Westergaard, Marit & Merete Anderssen
2015. Word Order Variation in Norwegian Possessive Constructions. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 21 ff. DOI logo
Zuban, Yulia, Maria Martynova, Sabine Zerbian, Luka Szucsich & Natalia Gagarina
2021. Word order in heritage Russian: clause type and majority language matter. Russian Linguistics 45:3 ► pp. 253 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.