Norway language
The Kingdom of Norway is a country belonging to Europe, whose capital is Oslo. It has a population of 5 million inhabitants (118th) and an area of 385,203 km 2 (67th). Its human development index is very high (it is the 1st in the world) and its official currency is the Norwegian crown. But what language is spoken in Norway?
What language do they speak in Norway?
Norway has two official languages:
- Norwegian, spoken by 95% of the population.
- The Sami languages, language of the Lappish people.
In addition, Norway has recognized minority languages: Kven (1,500 speakers), Romani (500), and Scando-Romani (less than 100). Kven is spoken in the northeast of the country, particularly in Tromsø and Finnmark, and is close to Finnish (they are quite mutually intelligible).
English is the most learned foreign language in the country, and is spoken by more than 80 % of the population, especially by young people. Other languages taught in schools are German, French and Spanish.
The most common immigrant languages are Polish (97,200 speakers), Lithuanian (37,600), Swedish (36,300), Somali (28,700), German (24,600), Tagalog (20,500), Urdu (20,000), Danish (19,500), Thai (18,600), Russian (17,200), Persian (17,200), Romanian (13,900), Vietnamese (13,800), Bosnian (13,600), Spanish (13,000), Turkish (11,300) and Latvian (10,100).
The government offers Norwegian language courses to immigrants who wish to obtain Norwegian citizenship. Since 2008, it is mandatory to be able to speak Norwegian (or some Sami language) to obtain citizenship. If this is not possible, show that you have attended 300 hours of Norwegian class or speak one of the Scandinavian languages (Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Faroese).
The Norwegian language
Norwegian (norsk) is the language of the majority of the population, as a first or second language. It has two official scripts: Bokmål and Nynorsk. Both are used in public administration, schools, the media and in the church. The more widely used of the two scripts is Bokmål, by 80-90% of Norwegian speakers.
There is a wide variety of Norwegian dialects, some varying significantly from others in their written forms. Despite this, they are all intelligible to each other, with some possible difficulty in some phrase and mode of pronunciation.
The Sami languages
The Sami languages (Saami) are a group of Uralic languages, spoken by the Lappish people (north of the Scandinavian countries). Norway is the country with the most Samps in the world. The dialects spoken in the Norwegian country are Lule (500 speakers), Northern (15,000) and Southern (300).
Share which languages are spoken in Norway.
