lost much of their old national character, while the current Danish form of speech supplanted more or less thoroughly the genuine Norse dialects, that had sprung up in the various provinces of Norway. For four hundred years the country remained under the rule of the kings of Denmark, and when, in 1814, this long protracted union was severed, and Norway was incorporated with Sweden into one joint realm, it possessed no cultivated native tongue, or literature, apart from Denmark. The Dano-Norwegian language which was thus common to both Norwegians and Danes had, however, in the course of time become so deeply affected by Germanizing influences, that it had lost much of the special Scandinavian character, which could still be traced in Swedish, and in the various forms of the "Bondesprog," or peasant language of provincial Norway. Of this Danish and Norwegian scholars have long been sensible, and more than fifty years ago a scheme was propounded by the eminent philologist, Rasmus Rask, for the thorough reform of "Dansk-Norsk" (Dano-Norwegian). Rask's system included the adoption of the Latin characters, with the addition of the various marks and accents which the Swedes had long used to indicate special vernacular vowel-sounds, and other Northern modes of accentuation. Its most important feature was, however, its proposed rejection, as far as circumstances admitted, of all foreign elements, and its reversion to the Old Northern as the basis of grammatical construction and orthography. His sugges tions found little favour at the time, but when the Linguistic Congress, which had been called together at the desire of the leading Scandinavian writers and printers, met at Stockholm, in 1869, to deliberate on the best methods for bringing the written languages of the three Northern kingdoms into closer harmony with each other, and with their common mother-tongue, the Old Northern, Rask's system was adopted as the main basis of the Orthographic Resolutions, unanimously accepted by the delegates. In accordance with the scheme of the Congress, which closely agreed with the system of spelling and writing already in use among the Swedes, it was proposed that the Gothic characters should be discarded in Dano-Norwegian; that all superfluous letters should be rejected; that the marks employed in Swedish to indicate special vowel-sounds, as å (for aa), ä and ö, should be adopted, and that the spelling of the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish should be governed by the same rules, wherever the nature and root of the words admitted of their being brought into accord. The moving spring of this radical reform of the Scandinavian languages was the national desire of giving to the three Northern lands one joint literature equally accessible to all. And for a time it seemed as if this object would be speedily attained; but it must be admitted that the progress of the much needed reform in the mode of writing, and spelling Dano-Norwegian, has not been as rapid and complete as its advocates had hoped. At the present moment the old and the new systems are still running their parallel courses in Denmark and in Norway, for while scientific works almost without exception, and some of the best literary productions of either country, are printed and spelt in accordance with the new system, the popular daily press, and all public notices, and advertisements, generally adhere to the German characters, and to the old forms of spelling. In Norway this uncertainty in regard to the method of writing and spelling the language is intensified by strong national feeling, for while all parties are agreed in desiring to bring back their spoken language to the more genuine Northern forms, of which survivals are to be found in the "Bondesprog," or peasant-language, there is no agreement as to the special peasant-dialect that should be accepted as authoritative, and no harmony in the manner of carrying out the proposed changes. Thus, while one section of the patriotic party follows H. Ibsen and B. Björnson in writing their native language in accordance with the strictest rules of the modern system, others, equally zealous, refuse to depart from a single one of the practices which it was the special object of that system to do away with. Both parties have, however, one common object in view, which is to make modern Norwegian diverge as much as possible from the older Danish; and the result of the present tendency to take up into the spoken language of the cultivated classes expressions and modes of pronunciation, which till recently were exclusively used by the peasants, is to make Norwegian approximate more closely to Swedish. At present the language is passing through a stage of transition, almost bewildering to foreigners, who must be prepared, for some time to come, to meet in Norway with the most extreme diversity in the mode in which the language is spoken, and written, by the older and younger generations of cultivated Norwegians. In the present work we have followed the new system of orthography and printing, as the more rational and simple; but to the modern alphabet we have subjoined the German characters, owing to their frequent use by the Danish and Norwegian Press. We have also endeavoured to show the leading differences of pronunciation between Danes and Norwegians, and, where the occasion required it, we have pointed out some of the comparatively rare cases in which each nation employs some special word, peculiar to itself, to designate one common object. The Dano-Norwegian Alphabet is composed of the following letters, representing the Latin and the German characters : A 2, called ah, pronounced like a in father. as in English. like k before a, å, o, u. like a in lady, and like at the end of words. as in English. like hard g in English by the Danes, and like English y before the soft vowels by Norwegians. |