EditHint The relevance of this page is? DeleteThisPageSoon 12-11-2009 *''The relevance of this page is that some Wikizens are from Norway.'' ** WikiIsNotWikipedia page will be deleted very soon. [The relevance of this page is?] *[ ''The relevance of this page is that some Wikizens are from Norway.'' The information here is not on Wikipedia and the relevance of country pages has been debated in the past, which is why they are still here. Why pick on Norway? One of Wiki's core topics is "people", which includes where they live.] I missed this page earlier: TheNordics (OffTopic), so it makes this page more legit to me. My complaint is, the page has been deleted before, and does not seem to contain anything special that can't be found easily. Now, if it connected to something more tangible giving it relevance, that would be another thing. So, because of TheNordics, will let it stand for now, and if enough time goes by without further deletion, then will take that to be an OK. ---- Norway is a country in Europe, but is not a member state of the EuropeanUnion. Rumors say there is a really beautiful mountain landscape. I will have to go and check it out. There is an urban legend in Norway which claims that Americans think there are polar bears walking in the streets of Norway. http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3064/0ekux3808481.jpg Another interesting rumor is that there exist two written forms of Norwegian language. Could anyone enlighten me? Is it similar to the phonetic-iconic concept in Chinese and Japanese languages? There are two variants of the Norwegian language, not only two variants of the written form. Bokmaal and Nynorsk. (AFAIK: Norway is Norge in Bokmaal, Noreg in Nynorsk.) It is not similar to the phonetic-iconic concept, just two different languages. Bokmaal is the most commonly used writing language. It evolved from Danish, which was the official language in the many hundred years occupation-period. It is now close to the form of "non-slang" speech in Oslo. Nynorsk (means New Norwegian as it was created quite recently (150 years ago)) is Norwegian as close as it could be without the Danish influences. ''In your opinion. Nynorsk is used by approx. 15% of the population. It's quite funny how a country with a tiny population can fight over such matters.'' It was constructed by Ivar Aasen from a broad range of dialects across the country. ''Mr Aasen focused on dialects he thought representative and not on a broad selection (my opinion).'' (Rescued from deleted page:) Bokmaal means book language; it is derived from riksmaal, dano-norwegian, and is itself a different language in that its grammatical composition is different from riksmaal. Ivar Aasen created landsmaal (now known as nynorsk). My grandfather speaks this form of skriftspraak (yes, nynorsk and bokmaal were and are only meant as written languages, not spoken) but my grandfather none the less speaks it - why? Because his father and grandfather moved to North Dakota at the time Aasen was studying the languages in western Norway, so they passed down their spoken language to my grandfather. So yes, nynorsk is also in fact, in parts of Norway, a spoken language. It was and still is. And guess what? it's closer to Old Norwegian than bokmaal. ''What kind of an argument is that? I guess Icelandic is even closer to Old Norwegian. I don't understand Icelandic and nobody is speaking Old Norwegian these days. -- ThomasEyde'' Capital: Oslo Population: about 4,5 million. On the 3rd of December, CNN did a story on The Nature of Norway: "There's something poetic about summer evenings on a fjord. The world is bathed in a mellow, steady, shadowless light that hardly changes. The steady call of gulls and the lazy gulping of small boats taking on little waves provide a relaxing soundtrack." (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/12/03/norway.tourism/index.html?iref=storysearch) ---- Subject of a hilarious quasi-documentary by JohnCleese: "Norway: Home of Giants". ---- CategoryCountry