Knud Knudsen (Linguist)

Knud Knudsen

Knud Knudsen (born January 6, 1812 in Holt, † March 4, 1895 in Christiania ) was a Norwegian linguist who developed the Norwegian Riksmål . He was no less important for the development of the Norwegian language than Ivar Aasen .

Life

The house in which Knud Knudsen spent his childhood is now a cultural center of the Aust-Agder province (Aust-Agder kulturhistoriske senter)

Knud Knudsen was born in Holt near Tvedestrand in 1812 . He was the son of a small farmer and a teacher and grew up in poor conditions. He was interested in literature at an early age and entered the middle school in Arendal in 1831 , then the high school in Christiania . After completing a teaching degree in philology in 1840, he became a study assessor in Drammen until 1846 . From then on he switched to the cathedral school in Christiania as a senior teacher and stayed there until his retirement in 1880.

Act

Reform of the curriculum

At that time, Latin was the main subject in high schools. He immediately turned against the dominance of the classical languages, as he could not see the usefulness of Latin and Greek for the students. Together with Alexander Kielland he led a campaign against the classical languages, and he finally succeeded in getting them abolished in high schools. The mother tongue became the main subject.

Reform of the orthography

He found that the students made a lot of spelling mistakes because the spelling differed greatly from the spoken language. It was based on the Danish language. He called for greater alignment with the spoken language. He joined the orthophony movement of the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask , which demanded that every letter must correspond to a speech sound and vice versa. In 1845 he published his first article on the Norwegian language: Om Lydene, Lydtegnene og Rettskrivningen i det norske Sprog (About sounds, phonetic signs and spelling in the Norwegian language). This title indicates the main theme of his later work and culminated in the motto: The Norwegian written language must be based on Norwegian speaking. The Norwegian words must be written as they are. Since there was no uniform way of speaking, he decided on the most commonly used pronunciation of the educated. In 1850 his article Om Norskhed i vor Tale og Skrift followed (About Norwegian in our speaking and writing). Here he discussed the specific Norwegian in the language and pleaded for the somewhat harsher pronunciation of the words in Norwegian compared to Danish to also be expressed in the orthography in order to counteract the danization of pronunciation. As an example, he cited words with b, d and g, which in Norwegian would be pronounced like p, t and k.

Reform of the debate

In 1850 he also created speaking instructions for the actors in the Det Norske Theater in Bergen . There the Danish language dominated the scene, which the nationally minded Norwegians, including Knudsen, considered unworthy. He tried to get some actors to use upscale colloquial language instead. He worked with Ibsen , who had been the theater's artistic director since 1851. Ibsen later confessed that Knud Knudsen had a strong linguistic influence. Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson temporarily followed his suggestions. But later, out of consideration for Danish readers, they reverted to the Danish spelling. In 1869 Ibsen and Knudsen were the Norwegian representatives at the Scandinavian Spelling Congress in Stockholm. The consistent lower case of nouns and the replacement of aa by å were suggested and later introduced.

The fight against foreign words

Knud Knudsen was also a keen linguist and, in a publication that appeared in 1887, strongly opposed foreign words. His most important contribution was his dictionary “Unorsk og norsk eller Fremdmedords avløsning” (Un-Norwegian and Norwegian or the replacement of foreign words), in which he replaced hundreds of foreign words with Norwegian ones. He also made use of the work of Ivar Aasen.

success

But he also had tough opponents, such as B. the famous Norwegian historian Peter Andreas Munch , with whom a long polemical argument developed in the newspapers. Munch was against mending a living language and demanded that we go back to the old norrøne language and dialects. Munch's unassailable authority threatened to ruin Knudsen's endeavors. The first victory came in 1862 with a decree to carry out a spelling reform, which largely followed Knudsen's proposals. Mainly "silent letters" were removed from it. From Miil (mile) was , Mil from Huus (House), was Hus, Troe (faith) to Tro . Even the spelling of foreign words has been simplified, it was from philosopher newly Filosof . The introduction of hard consonants into orthography was not yet dared, but Knudsen aimed at it. It was only implemented with the language reform of 1907, i.e. after his death. In 1867 he laid out his program of gradual adaptation in the book Det norske målstræv (The Norwegian language efforts ). It consisted of several points, the most important of which was the replacement of b, d and g according to the Norwegian pronunciation by p, t and k, the replacement from ld and nd through ll and nn as well as the introduction of short forms such as be (ask, pray), bli (stay), dra (pull) instead of bede, blive, drage war. He also demanded - initially unsuccessfully - that nouns be strictly lower-case.

He was familiar with Ivar Aasen's efforts to create a Landsmål based on Norwegian dialects. He did not oppose this plan, but thought its general introduction was an unrealistic dream. But he now felt he was in competition with Landsmål. This became clear when in 1885 the Landsmål was equated with the Riksmål. But in parts of the population, especially the urban bourgeoisie, the fear of the complete victory of the Landsmål grew, which attracted more and more supporters.

In 1867 he published the book Den landsgyldige norske uttale (The correct Norwegian pronunciation), where he took the view that an educated way of speaking was widespread in the country and that a high-level language could be found. In 1887 the ministry took this point of view and issued a circular, according to which the students should speak the common language of the educated, but not an artificial language. That it was impossible to practice was a different matter because no student knew what a "colloquial language of the educated" should be.

His work became the basis of the Riksmål. In 1929 this language was renamed Bokmål from Norwegian Storting . The subsequent controversy about the standardization of this form of language led to the fact that Bokmål split into two versions (more moderate Bokmål and more conservative Riksmål), each with its own standardization and language tradition.

literature

• Einar Lundeby: Knud Knudsen - riksmålets fader, bokmålets bestefar. In: Språknytt 1995, No. 4.