[goblin89]

The status of Norwegian Nynorsk is reminiscent of Yue/Cantonese. In areas where it is native, it’s used in writing more rarely (and very rarely in official writing) compared to Mandarin (a distinct, not mutually intelligible language) or English.

Another similarity is that Cantonese, like Nynorsk, is considered higher status where it’s spoken, and like Nynorsk it’s under somewhat of a threat so the communities know they have to keep it strong.

What makes it more interesting is that the non-phonetic, semi-ideographic nature of the writing system means no direct unambiguous translation between sound and written symbols—so that you may actually struggle to write down certain turns of spoken Cantonese, even if you are a native speaker!

Another difference is that, unlike Nynorsk (which began as “New Norwegian”), Cantonese is old—at least on par with or arguably older compared to languages used for writing in the same area.

[Tor3]

In addition to what vidarh said - it's not comparable to Mandarin vs Cantonese, as those are spoken languages. Nynorsk is one way of writing (and reading) Norwegian, it is not a spoken form (nor is Bokmål). Some dialects are kind of closer if you try to "speak" it (read out loud, from e.g. a book), and some are farther away, most dialects contain elements where some words will fit better in one form and other elements fit better in the other form. But even grammar is often different in spoken Norwegian (and spoken Norwegian is just a huge continuum of dialects, which, if you don't stop, stretch across the borders to Sweden and Denmark too).

[actionfromafar]

Sweden, Norway and Denmark is a perfect example of language continuum. At the fringes, the division between them is clearly for political and administrative purposes. It called all have been named "Danish".

I think what goes for "German" has even more internal differences.

[Tor3]

Yes, it's just a huge continuum. I call it "Scandinavian" for short.

[komadori]

You can write Cantonese, although most Cantonese speakers' "formal" written language is more closely related to spoken Mandarin (Modern Standard Chinese) than to the way they normally speak.

I recommend "Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular" by Don Snow.

[IlliOnato]

How well people speaking different dialects understand one another? Is there some "common dialect" that everybody uses with speakers of dialect different from their own? What TV presenters use? Or nation-scale politicians?

[vidarh]

Nynorsk is not considered higher status other than maybe by tiny groups of its users.

[goblin89]

I know nothing about it except what is in the article, and the article characterizes Nynorsk as “cultural elite language”—it looks like the article is not accurate?

That aside, “cultural elite” or “status” are always relative, of course…

[vidarh]

A small cultural elite within its own user base likes to thumb their nose at Bokmål, but the proportion of the population who uses Nynorsk is only 10%. The vast majority of the "cultural elite" of Norway as a whole uses Bokmål. There are perhaps some small subsets where it might punch above its weight relative to the total number of users, and I think that is what the article is hinting at. E.g. we have had perhaps more prominent authors who use Nynorsk than the proportion of Nynorsk users might have made you expect.

But conversely, you'll if anything be more likely to find people with negative attitudes to Nynorsk, with at least some proportion of people who resent having to deal with a language only used by 10%.

[samus]

The comparison is a bit flawed since there is no dialect continuum between spoken Mandarin and Cantonese, and there might have never been one.

A crucial difference is that there is no standardized form of written Cantonese. There is a common set of characters used in advertising, sometimes newspapers, or in court transcripts, but that's it. For anything official, Modern Standard Written Chinese is used.

People write Cantonese in private of course, but that usage is not uniform at all since there is a lot of slang (especially swearing words) for which more than one popular way to write it down exists. Quite often the characters chosen for that purpose had different meanings originally. Some particularly novel or distinctive words and idioms are even partly written in Latin letters, like 快-D.

[goblin89]

> A crucial difference is that there is no standardized form

Depends on who you ask. What’s the region in question? What counts as a standard? Is Nynorsk codified by ISO? Et cetera.

> People write Cantonese in private of course

It‘s used plenty in public in Cantonese-native areas!

> that usage is not uniform

Yes, there is a disconnect and different ways of writing down a turn of spoken phrase. Sometimes people wouldn’t know offhand how they would even do it about a purely spoken turn of phrase.

[samus]

> Depends on who you ask. What’s the region in question? What counts as a standard? Is Nynorsk codified by ISO? Et cetera.

A government regulating it by teaching it in school and actively using it in public would be a strong criteria. Alternatively, an established body of literature that serves as a model (that's how written Italian evolved).

> It‘s used plenty in public in Cantonese-native areas

Yes, that's also what I said. However, any official announcements or documents are quite unlikely to use it.

[bjornevik]

> Nynorsk, is considered higher status where it’s spoken

Neither nynorsk or bokmål are spoken languages.

[goblin89]

Nynorsk is, according to TFA, predominantly used in speech and less used in writing, while Bokmål is the opposite. (Minus region specifics.) Is that not correct?

My impression, only based on this article, is that Nynorsk and Bokmål are both spoken as well as written, just more or less so depending on context and region. Just as English is both a written and a spoken language, and Cantonese is both a written and a spoken language.

[Tor3]

Nynorsk and Bokmål are both _written_ forms only. Norwegian spoken language is a huge continuum of dialects - there's no official spoken Norwegian (unlike e.g. Swedish, where something called "rikssvensk" was introduced by the authorities - "national spoken Swedish").

What you will find though is that there are a couple of scenarios where people will kind of speak the written form. One is, or at least used to be, newscasters on TV. They used to have rules which limited the kind of speech used, for reasons. And, as the news were essentially read from a script.. you speak it like it's written. Be that Bokmål or Nynorsk. And that's where you will find spoken Bokmål (or Nynorsk).. when reading aloud. And, as I mentioned in another comment.. when teaching people Norwegian. In the beginning you kind of speak the written form, otherwise the student would be totally confused.

[goblin89]

If they were solely written languages then you wouldn’t be able to, for example, read the text aloud, right?

I don’t have any first-hand knowledge, but according to Wikipedia on Bokmål it looks like it can be spoken as well (Wikipedia uses a phrase “spoken Bokmål”), but without a universally agreed-upon and regulated pronunciation. Isn’t it similar to English in this sense?

[CogitoCogito]

> If they were solely written languages then you wouldn’t be able to, for example, read the text aloud, right?

I believe /u/Tor3's point is that Norwegians would read and pronounce nynorsk and bokmål the same regardless of the differences in the writing.

> Isn’t it similar to English in this sense?

It is. I don't pronounce English words differently when they're written with e.g. British or American spellings.

[Tor3]

Bokmål and Nynorsk are both systems designed as a common form of writing. None of them were ever meant to be a spoken language - they are "best effort" of trying to make a unified way of writing. That doesn't mean that it's not possible to "speak" them, as in e.g. reading aloud (though the intonation and pronunciation may still wary wildly depending on the speaker's actual dialect).

[goblin89]

That means I was wrong in my original understanding!

[matsemann]

I think you're misunderstanding a bit. Those are both written languages only, but some may speak closer to one than the other. My speaking would be pretty close to bokmål, as I have "no" dialect.

Nynorsk is a mix of lots of various spoken dialects. No one really "speaks" nynorsk, but for many it's closer to how they speak than bokmål would be, but it's still not 1:1 for them. The only way you really would "speak" nynorsk if you're reading a play or something written in it.

[vintermann]

> as I have "no" dialect.

That almost certainly means "a moderate Oslo dialect, neither Stovner or Frogner", and it's probably not nearly as close to written Bokmål as you think (unless you learned Norwegian as a second language).

[matsemann]

As I wrote in another comment[0]: Foreign parents, and most kids spoke like Oslo among other kids, and their dialect only with adults. So pretty plain Norwegian. Most people would however guess I'm from Østfold, due to a thick "L" I've no idea where I picked up high here in the mountains.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39026276

[toretore]

Thank you for correcting a pet peeve of mine: People thinking they "speak Bokmål". Everyone speaks a dialect.

[matsemann]

Hence my quotes around the "no". I of course speak a dialect, but since it's similar to what the majority speak, it's almost never labeled as such.

[sfn42]

Nynorsk was an attempt at creating a written language closer to the spoken language. The problem is that in Norway out dialects are widely different. For example, the phrase "I am" is written as "Jeg er" in bokmål, "Eg er" in nynorsk. Nobody says "Jeg" - it can be pronounced as "Jei", "Eg", "Æ", or even "Oss" though that's a different word that some dialects use in place of the "correct" one.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Yeah. Secretly it's actually just written Sunnmøre dialect with a bunch arcane and archaic vocabulary words from around the country thrown in, that if they're used, everyone else has to google.

That's why I hate reading it so much. I swear every time i read an article or something in Nynorsk, there's at least one word in there I've never seen in my life, that sounds like something a Sunnmøring spat out during a stroke.

[vintermann]

But that word is the first example that you don't actually pronounce bokmål the way it's written: Yes, some say "Ye" and some say "Eeg", but no one pronounces it "Yeeg" except maybe foreigners reading from a text.

[matsemann]

Some dialects also say "i" for I. (but pronounces like an English "e")