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Norwegian dialect, but a branch of the Danish — although originally
a foreign plant, has, as already indicated, to an essential degree
taken colour from the soil into which it has been transplanted.
Now, at the end of the century, it stands as an independent idiom
at the side of the Danish, from which it is distinguished by the
same characteristics that mark the two nations. Still, it is a matter
of course, that such a young and not very firmly established
language, in which native and foreign tendencies still often
battle for supremacy, and in which the new is fighting the old,
is much more difficult to characterise than those languages in
which an independent civilisation has been wrought out, which
through centuries have been undergoing a continuous development,
in which style and speech bear the full individual impress of the
nation. In this country, the individuality of the different authors
is also very prominent in their diction. Some are conservatively
correct, others radically progressive; most of them write a very
uneven style, which, in men like Bjørnson and Lie, is pregnant
with new possibilities. The best representative of New-Norwegian
classical style is Ibsen.
If we compare the new Norwegian language with the
mother-tongue, we shall be able to make the observation, that although it
has been under its influence the whole time, it has in many
cases retained old peculiarities which the mother-tongue has
afterwards given up. As far as our pronunciation is concerned, it
agrees, as mentioned above, in all essential respects with the popular
tongue in contra-distinction to Danish. The hard consonants
contribute greatly towards giving our speech a harder sound than the
Danish with its modified sounds. Our accent is more like the
Swedish than the Danish; one characteristic feature is the rising
accent which often makes a foreigner believe our statements to be
queries. Our speech is less melodious than the Swedish; the song
element does not play so prominent a part. The inflection is being
continuously Norwegianised, especially the formation of the plural;
we have thousands of separate Norwegian words and phrases. One
characteristic feature of our language is the numerous double forms,
of which one, being Danish in its sound, especially belongs to the
literary style and the more select language, and regularly has a
more abstract signification, while the other, being Norwegian in
its form, belongs to the every-day speech. The word-formation
is most closely related to Danish, although several derivatives have
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