Talk:Bokmål

Merged Bokmål/Riksmål/Dano-Norwegian
As you can see, I have merged the text from the Riksmål and Dano-Norwegian articles into the Bokmål article and redirected those articles here. I figured it was easier to just show how it could be done than to ask for your opinions beforehand. Now that you can see the result, your opinions are greatly appreciated.

Plutix 21:38, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I should add that the main motivation was to avoid redundancy. The three articles told the same story with just somewhat different emphasis.

Plutix 21:43, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I think this was an improvement. Well done!Inge 11:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Redundancy should be solved using links. To redirect to "Bokmål" from "Riksmål" is bound to cause confusion. Someone searching for "Riksmål" may, upon being redirected, assume they are the same thing (which is a common misunderstanding). --84.211.138.201 (talk) 05:51, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Table needs an overhaul!
Or don't you think? bord is not mentioned, but only given IPA pronunciation from which the word may be guessed! Same with banan. I did not make any changes, because I too do not yet know where to place this best, but it's really mandatory to put the actual words in, not only their pronunciation. -andy 77.7.15.196 (talk) 16:18, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

"Bokmål vs. Riksmål"
The title of that section should maybe be changed. How about Riksmål? --Normash (talk) 09:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Etymology or origin of the term
It's very basic and simple where the term originated.
 * «bok» = Book
 * «mål» = Goal (or objective, meaning, intent, etc.) cf. Swedish «tungomål», dialect; literally, the meaning, intent, or "goal" of tongue or spoken language.

Kids are going to school and there is (or was at one time) a unified curriculum or literally a "Book Goal" for reading, writing, and speaking proper Norwegian. justinacolmena (talk) 22:49, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Reading and writing, yes. Speaking, no. Everyone speaks their local dialect, with unique grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation (or, to be more accurate, a unique combination of the three). This sharply contrasts with Swedish. Even the name Bokmål betrays this: books (boka) are all about reading and writing.
 * Even Urban East Norwegian is not a perfect representation of Bokmål in speech:
 * There are letters with multiple pronunciations (such as $⟨u⟩$ for both and  and ⟨o⟩ for both  and, though there's also $⟨å⟩$ which can only be )
 * There are sounds with multiple spellings (such as with the spellings $⟨sj⟩$ and $⟨rs⟩$)
 * There are silent letters not sounded in UEN (such as the $⟨d⟩$ in bønder 'farmers', homophonous with bønner  'beans' if you ignore tone (they are perfectly homophonous in singing)).
 * Since not all dialects do this (in many other dialects, the vowel corresponding to UEN is often  when the Bokmål spelling is $⟨o⟩$ (giving it a more consistent pronunciation) and West Norwegian distinguishes $⟨sj⟩$  from $⟨rs⟩$  and some dialects sound the d in bønder, thus ), even UEN is not spoken Bokmål in the literal sense of the term, it's just another Norwegian dialect that happens to be really close to Bokmål, likely closer than any other dialect (but, as I said, there are things that other dialects "do better", or are more consistent at, than UEN). Speakers outside Østlandet are unlikely to consider UEN to be a pronunciation standard in any way. Its origins are the 19th century Norwegian elite's pronunciation of Danish (the former literal language of Norway), but it's since evolved into a dialect of its own (consider the recent merger of $⟨l⟩$ with $⟨rl⟩$ in most positions, resulting in a complete overhaul of the distribution of  and  and the subsequent phonemicization of  as the most common lateral approximant. They only contrast after  and, where  is velarized to  (which, AFAIK, is a sound unique to UEN and maybe some neighboring dialects). And, of course, the (equally recent?) merger of  with , found in Oslo and several other big cities outside Østlandet).
 * (Conversely, tone is not indicated for most words in Bokmål, and pitch accent appears in almost all dialects of Norwegian, with many (most?) but not all words agreeing in tone across all of the dialects. The bønder–bønner pair and similar pairs are an exception to the rule (the one regarding pitch accent not being indicated in orthography), but there are more exceptions when you delve deeper into morphology. Wetterlin's Tonal Accents in Norwegian seems to be an excellent read on the topic (you can access parts of it on Google Books), but its price is insane. Also, Nynorsk indicates some minimal pairs that are written alike in Bokmål).
 * (Also, in, ⟨◌̀⟩ is nothing more than a generic symbol for Tone 1, which may or may not be the same as the Oslo realization. I prefer this instead of ad-hoc transcriptions such as , which is not IPA usage. Hopefully the phonemic slashes make my use of ⟨◌̀⟩ considerably less confusing.) Sol505000 (talk) 16:40, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Sol505000 Even though we're not a dictionary, I wonder whether a brief mention of earlier uses of bokmål might be in order, to avoid the impression that it was an entirely new word. This NAOB entry mentions its earlier use for Latin as used in Norse times, and for literary as opposed to everyday language in the 19th century. In fact they give a Norse origin for both of those. Musiconeologist (talk) 19:35, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

"Is a . . . variety of . . . Danish"
I don't feel is a Norwegianised variety of the Danish language is accurate—it implies the language is still Danish, and maybe even that Bokmål aims to be Danish. I think something like derives from 19th-century written Danish, made progressively more Norwegian over many decades would be better. Musiconeologist (talk) 18:25, 25 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The examples in a typical NAOB entry give an idea of how much it's changed. Musiconeologist (talk) 18:34, 25 March 2024 (UTC)