Section One - Grammar and Spelling

1. Gender: Norwegian has three - a neuter in addition to the masculine and feminine. The articles and endings are as follows:

- Neuter: 'et valg' - 'valget' (a choice - the choice)
- Feminine: ei bok - boka (a book - the book)
- Masculine: en skriver - skriveren (a printer - the printer)

The feminine form may not be used very much in promotional or technical texts. It is possible in most cases to use the masculine form to avoid what is called the a-form - considered a bit 'common'. You can even say en kvinne - kvinnen (a woman - the woman).

2. Cases: The genitive - nouns get an -s and NO apostrophe, e.g. the girl's car = Jentas bil.

3. Articles: There is no definite article in Norwegian. The definite form is an ending in Norwegian. The damper = demperen, the book = boka, the house = huset.
There is an indefinite article, one for each gender.
A damper = en demper (m), a book = ei bok (f) and a house = et hus.

4. One-letter words: There are two one-letter words in Norwegian that appear quite frequently -
'Å' which is the infinitive indicator; å gå = to walk
'I' which means in. This word does not have to appear as upper case.

5. Accents: There are three types of accents used in Norwegian -
akutt aksent (accent aigu, ´)
grav aksent (accent grave, `)
and cirkumfleks ("roof", ˆ)
The accents may generally be dropped in all words except for names, and it is more common to use the accents in Nynorsk than it is in Bokmal. It is not normal for upper case characters to keep the accent as they can quite freely be dropped.

6. Plural: Nouns normally get the plural endings: -er/e (indefinite) and - ene/ne (definite) ending.
e.g. book-books-the books = bok-bøker-bøkene (NB: irregular)
cartridges-the cartridges = patroner-patronene
printers-the printers = skrivere-skriverne
key-keys-the keys = nøkkel-nøkler-nøklene (NB: irregular)

7. Polite forms: Upper case for polite forms is common: De, Dem, Deres (you, you, your).

Section Two - Punctuation

As in English.

1. Full stops: No full stops in headings, titles or bullet points.

2. Speech marks: Note the use of speech marks, commas and full stops in the following translation:

"Give me more work!", shouted Chloe. "Gi meg mer å gjøre!", ropte Chloe.

"Would anyone like some tea?" asked George. "Vil noen ha te?", spurte George.

"I'm bored - can I go home now?", Michala said. "Jeg kjeder meg. Kan jeg gå hjem nå?", sa Michala.

3. Apostrophes: The general rule for use of apostrophe is that it is not used for the genitive, acronyms or with numbers.

Exceptions:

4. Colons, semi-colons and ellipsis: These are used in the same way as English, although the semi-colon is not used as often in Norwegian as in English.

5. Capitalisation: The capitalisation rules are mostly as in English, i.e. at the beginning of sentences, and in proper names. It is not common to capitalise each word in a heading in Norweg ian - just the first word. No rules apply for bullet points, but if the bullet points represent a list of subheadings, etc. it is natural to capitalise the first letter in each bullet point.

Section Three - Measurements and Abbreviations

1. Measurements: Official measurements are metric, although inches will be recognised.

Norway has its own mile, like Sweden: 10 kilometres equals 1 Norwegian mile.

Numbers over 9999: separated by a space or dot i.e. 16 000 or 16.000

Time: the 24hr system is used, so 10:30 am would be 10.30, noon would be 12.00, 4:30 pm would be 16.30, and midnight would be 24.00

Date: use the format 20/2/04 or 20.februar 2004.

A space is normally left between the number and the measurement abbreviation.

Decimal comma: i.e. 3,7 %. Note that there should always be a space before a % symbol.

Degrees are measured in Centigrade. 30°C

Currency: use format 40 kr, or NOK 40 for international version.

2. Abbreviations:

N/a = - [dash]
No. = nr
e.g. = f.eks
WxLxHxD = BxLxHxD (bredded x lengde x høyde x dybde)
1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th = 1/2/3/4
Mr. / Mrs.= Herr / Fru
Messrs.
Miss = Frøken
Dear Sir / Madam = Kjære Herr / Fru
m (for metre) = m
cm (for centimetre) = cm
lb (for pound weight) = lb (not commonly used)
g (for gram) = g
km (for kilometre) = km
yr (for year) = år (not abbreviated)
k (for 1000) = not commonly used
etc. = o.l.
among others = bl.a.
or similar = el.l.
and so on (etc.) = osv.
EMEA (Europe, Middle-East & Asia) = EMEA

Days of the week: Mon = man, Tues = tir, Wed = ons, Thurs = tors, Fri = fre, Sat = lør, Sun =søn

Months: Jan = jan, Feb = feb, Mar = mar, Apr = apr, May = mai, Jun = juni, Jul =juli, Aug =aug, Sep =sept, Oct = okt, Nov = nov, Dec =des

Seasons: Spring = vår, Summer = sommer, Autumn = høst, Winter = vinter (not normally abbreviated in English

Section Four - Hyphenation

1. Hyphenation when splitting words over a line:
- If the word has consonants/double consonants in it we usually put the hyphen between two consonants or between the double consonants. If the word consists of two or more words, the hyphen should be inserted where there is a natural break in the word.

e.g. trommel = trom-mel
skrivertrommel = skriver-trommel
fjellbekk = fjell-bekk

2. Hyphenation within words: not so common

3. Hyphenation in linking different words together: it is common to see long, linked words with no hyphen, e.g. colour-ink cartridge = fargeblekkpatron

4. End-of-line hyphenation: It is possible occasionally to hyphenate after a single letter as well as after two letters when they are prefixes such as
a-, an-, ab-, be-, in-, re-:
e.g. a-typisk, a-sosial, be-ruset, an-gripe, av-sette, re-sirkulere, in-formere

It is also possible to hyphenate before two end letters in longer words, if the endings are -er, -en: e.g. patron-er, skriver-en

When dashes are used, the shorter 'N'-dash is most common.

Section Five - Miscellaneous Peculiarities

Anita Husebaek-Shaw:

Norwegian prefers never to use more than one hyphen in a word construction, even if the English text shows a construction with two or more hyphens.

Place names tend to follow the spelling of the place in its original language and vary quite a lot from the English at times.

Stylistic forms are used in the same way as English.
Names are written as in English with the surname following the first name.
Surnames are not normally written entirely in upper case.

Section Six - Geographic Distribution

Norwegian is the national language of Norway, spoken by virtually all of the country's 4 million inhabitants. Norwegian is one of the Scandinavian languages and is closely related to Danish and Swedish, especially the former. Norway and Denmark were one country for four centuries before 1814, and from then until 1905 Norway was under the Swedish crown. During the years of Danish rule a Danish-influenced "city language" began to develop in Bergen and Oslo, and Danish eventually became the written language of Norway.

Today there are two distinct Norwegian dialects. The Dano-Norwegian dialect, originally called riksmål ("state language"), is now known as bokmål ("book language"). Most newspapers and radio and television broadcasts are in bokmål. About 1850 a movement for the recognition of Norwegian as a language distinct from Danish led to the establishment of landsmål ("country language"), which was based on the dialects of rural Norway. Known today as nynorsk ("New Norse"), it was intended to carry on the tradition of Old Norse, interrupted in the 15th century. At present bokmål and nynorsk have equal status both in government and in schools. Attempts to combine the two into samnorsk ("Common Norwegian") have thus far been unsuccessful, but most forward-looking Norwegians believe that it is only a matter of time before they are eventually merged.

Norwegian is spoken/used in the following countries:
Jan Mayen, Norway, Svalbard.

Language Family
Family: Indo-European
Subgroup: Germanic
Branch: North (Scandinavian)

Source: http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Norwegian - Copyright © Kenneth Katzner, The Languages of the World, Published by Routledge.

http://www.sprakrad.no/

Section Seven – Character Set