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What's it like to be Norwegian? To live in Norway. It'll be awfully lonely if you don't learn the language, that's for sure. But...which one?
That depends.
Written Norwegian comes in many flavors, including the officially recognized Norwegian Bokmål ("book language") and Norwegian Nynorsk ("new Norwegian") and the unofficial, conservative, Danish-leaning Riksmål ("national language") and an even more conservative, purist form of Nynorsk called Høgnorsk ("High Norwegian").
Spoken Norwegian is all circumstantial, my Norwegian-in-training. One's Norwegian dialect is dependent on where one is from. But should you ever find yourself deep in the Norwegian forest without knowledge of the language (and your senses) if you know a bit of Danish you've at least that going for you, should you find shelter in a remote village.
Or not.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban discourse, and Norway's literary history. Historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianised variety of Danish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish.
Whether speaking or writing Norwegian, the Norwegian wannabe will find most foreign language courses teach a form of the language called Standard Eastern Norwegian (a "spoken standard" for Norwegian Bokmål). Get started I recommend the excellent and FREE basic Norwegian course from Byki 4 and The Norwegian Schools language series on youtube.
Of course, if you're in a hurry (you've got Norwegian forest to get lost in, after all) you could always just learn how to speak English in a Norwegian accent. (It's a start.)
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