What is the root language of Norwegian?

Answer 1

Modern Norwegian exists in two only partially mutually intelligible standards: bokmaal (Dano-Norwegian) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian); the latter was invented as a standard in the 19th century to be what Norwegian might have been like had Norway not been ruled so long by Denmark. Because Danish and Norwegian are quite similar, written Norwegian had otherwise died out because Norwegians simply wrote Danish but spoke Norwegian while Norway was a part of Denmark, which continued when Norway was part of Sweden. Modern Dano-Norwegian (bokmaal) is the most commonly used form, but New Norwegian is common in rural areas and in the north.

Both Danish and Norwegian, along with Swedish, Faeroese, and Icelandic, descended from Old Norse, which is also called North Germanic or Scandinavian. North Germanic is one of three branches of the Germanic languages (West Germanic includes English, Dutch, and German; East Germanic includes the now-extinct Gothic).

The Germanic languages in term are one branch of the Indo-European language family, that includes Latin, French, Spanish, Russian, Irish, Polish, Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Farsi, Hindi, Urdu, and many, many other languages.