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by Tor3 890 days ago
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.
1 comments
goblin89 890 days ago
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?

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CogitoCogito 890 days ago
> 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.

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Tor3 890 days ago
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).
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goblin89 890 days ago
That means I was wrong in my original understanding!
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