Norwegian orthography is the method of writing the Norwegian language, of which there are two written standards: BokmÃÂ¥l and Nynorsk. While BokmÃÂ¥l has for the most part derived its forms from the written Danish language and Danish-Norwegian speech, Nynorsk gets its word forms from Aasen's reconstructed "base dialect", which is intended to represent the distinctive dialectal forms. Both standards use a 29-letter variant of the Latin alphabet and the same orthographic principles.
The Norwegian alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and is identical to the Danish alphabet. Since 1917 it has consisted of the following 29 letters.
The letters , , , and are not used in the spelling of native Norwegian words. They are rarely used; loanwords routinely have their orthography adapted to the native sound system.
Norwegian (especially the Nynorsk variant) also uses several letters with diacritic signs: , , , , , and . The diacritic signs are not compulsory, but can be added to clarify the meaning of words (homonyms) which otherwise would be identical. One example is ("a boy") versus ("one boy"), in Nynorsk, and ("a boy") versus ("one boy") in BokmÃÂ¥l. Diacritics are obligatory in foreign proper names that use them, like , , , . In other loanwords diacritics are optional, like , . If the loanword has been adapted for Norwegian use, diacritics that were there originally should not be included, as in , , . Note the letters , and never take diacritics.
The diacritic signs in use include the acute accent, grave accent and the circumflex. A common example of how the diacritics change the meaning of a word can be seen with the word :
can be used in , meaning "also". This word is found in both Nynorsk and BokmÃÂ¥l. An example of in Nynorsk is , meaning "weather".
The letter ÃÂ (HTML <code>&aring;</code>) was officially introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing Aa or aa. The new letter came from the Swedish alphabet, where it had been in official use since the 18th century. The former digraph Aa still occurs in personal names. Geographical names tend to follow the current orthography, meaning that the letter ÃÂ¥ will be used. Family names may not follow modern orthography, and as such retain the digraph aa where ÃÂ¥ would be used today. Aa remains in use as a transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons. Aa is treated like ÃÂ in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent letters A, meaning that while a is the first letter of the alphabet, aa is the last. This rule does not apply to non-Scandinavian names, so a modern atlas would list the German city of Aachen under A but list the Danish city of Aabenraa under ÃÂ .
A difference between the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variant ÃÂ instead of ÃÂ, and the variant ÃÂ instead of ÃÂ (like German). Also, the collating order for these three letters is different: ÃÂ , ÃÂ, ÃÂ.
In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet: