Skip to main content

Exploring the Norwegian Language and Its Heritage

This quiz tests your knowledge about the Norwegian language, its history, and its grammatical features. It covers topics including historical figures, linguistic characteristics, and the development of Scandinavian languages.

#Norwegian language #Scandinavian languages #language history #linguistics #Old Norse #grammar

1 ________

2 According to tradition, King ________ united Norway in 872.

3 Another example is the title høyesterettsjustitiarius (originally a combination of ________ and the actual title, justiciar).

4 Similar development in grammar and phonology happened in Swedish and Danish, keeping the ________ in continental Scandinavia intact, but with greater dialectal variation.

5 Some letters may be modified by ________: é, è, ê, ó, ò, and ô.

6 The languages now spoken in Scandinavia developed from the ________, which did not differ greatly between what are now Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish areas.

7 These Scandinavian languages together with the ________ and Icelandic language, as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages).

8 As in most Indo-European languages (English being one of a few exceptions), nouns are classified by gender, which has consequences for the declension of agreeing ________ and determiners.

9 In fact, Viking traders spread the language across ________ and into Russia, making Old Norse one of the most widespread languages for a time.

10 Norwegian is a ________ language with two distinct pitch patterns.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • poet Olav Angell was awarded a prize from the Arts Council Norway for his translation of James Joyce's novel Ulysses into Norwegian.
  • in 1887, Marius Nygaard co-published a Latin-Norwegian dictionary which is still in use.
  • the journalist and columnist Per Egil Hegge has been called a "housegod" of those dissatisfied with the development of the Norwegian language.
  • the literary début of Norwegian writer Mikkjel Fønhus was a novel about an outlaw.
  • with her thriller Nattdykk (1983), Kim Småge was the first of "a new female wave in Norwegian crime fiction".
  • from March 1940, Edvard Sylou-Crantz worked in Germany as a Norwegian-language propagandistic radio news reader.
  • The Art of Negative Thinking is an award winning Norwegian film about a paraplegic who rebels against the interventions of his support group and its lead social worker.
  • Ebba Haslund's adolescence novel Nothing Happened was virtually ignored by the press when it was first issued in Norwegian in 1948, but was later regarded as one of her most important books.
  • Anne Holtsmark translated well-known works such as Heimskringla and the Prose Edda from Norse to Norwegian.
  • Gustav Storm's translation of Snorre Sturlason's Heimskringla into Norwegian in the late 1890s was the basis for a popular edition of this work.
  • Kjell Heggelund has translated poems by Mao Zedong, as well as the French surrealists Paul Éluard and Robert Desnos into the Norwegian language.
  • Tanums store rettskrivningsordbok, the dictionary of choice for solvers and makers of Norwegian crossword puzzles, was edited by Marius Sandvei for more than five decades.
  • "Nocturne" is the Eurovision Song Contest winner with the fewest words, the Norwegian language original having only 25.
    • Previous Quiz Next Quiz

    Related Quizzes

    Exploring the Arabic Language

    #Arabic language #language learning #linguistics #Middle Eastern studies #cultural studies

    Exploring the Chinese Language

    #Chinese language #language family #linguistics #language speakers #cultural studies

    Exploring the English Language: A Quiz on Its History and Varieties

    #English language #linguistics #education #language history #Commonwealth

    Exploring the French Language

    #French language #language learning #linguistics #dialects #orthography #cultural studies

    Exploring the German Language

    #German language #linguistics #language family #German culture #language history

    Exploring the Greek Language and Its Historical Context

    #Greek language #linguistics #historical languages #language family #European languages #cultural studies

    Exploring the Irish Language and Its Heritage

    #Irish language #Gaeltacht #Celtic languages #Irish culture #Linguistics #Language history

    Exploring the Italian Language

    #Italian language #language learning #linguistics #European culture #Romance languages