Bokmål
Meanings
- One of the two major written standards of Norwegian, literally meaning “book language”.
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂ǵosder.? Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂g-der.? Proto-Germanic *bōks Old Norse bók Danish bog Norwegian Bokmål bok Proto-Germanic *maþlą Old Norse mál Norwegian Bokmål mål Norwegian Bokmål bokmålbor. English Bokmål Borrowed from Norwegian bokmål (literally “book language”). The equivalent Old Norse bókamál was used in this sense as a name for Latin, as it was the primary language used for writing of biblical work in much of the Middle Ages. The modern Icelandic name for Norwegian Bokmål is bókmál. When dialect research in western Norway was pioneered by Ivar Aasen in the 1850s, bogmaal took on the meaning of written standard language, as opposed to spoken dialects and Aasen's synthesized landsmaal. The two Norwegian languages, standardized in 1907, changed names in 1929 from landsmål to nynorsk, and from riksmål to bokmål.