Norwegian-speaking Wikipedias

Logo of the (older) Norwegian Wikipedia

The Norwegian-language Wikipedias are two language versions of Wikipedia . The older and larger is the version on Bokmål / Riksmål ( Norwegian Norsk Wikipedia på bokmål og riksmål ), the younger and smaller is the one on Nynorsk (Nynorsk Wikipedia) . In Norway, another language is spoken that has a Wikipedia, namely the Sami language . In mid-December 2011, the Bokmål version of the online lexicon consisted of around 320,000 articles, the Nynorsk version of over 75,000 articles, which were processed by around 217,000 (Bokmål) and 34,000 (Nynorsk) registered users. These included 2,100 and 270 very active users and 68 and 30 administrators, respectively .

The Norwegian written languages

There was a special development with the development of the Norwegian written language. Most Norwegians use a variant that is now called Bokmål (there is a similar, older variant called Riksmål ). This variant is a daughter language of Danish, which in the past has been Norway's official language for many centuries. A minority of 10 to 15 percent prefer Nynorsk , which is based on the old Norwegian dialects. For Nynorsk, linguistic, regional and national (it is less “Danish”) arguments can be made.

Norwegian Wikipedias

43.4% of the Wikipedia queries in Norway are directed to the Norwegian Wikipedia (in black), 44.4% to the English language Wikipedia (brown). Language versions of Wikipedia accessed in European countries, September 2009 - July 2010

Originally there was only one Norwegian Wikipedia, from 2001, with the ISO code no. Articles on Nynorsk were also accepted. But over time you wondered if you really wanted a language version with two language forms that are as different from each other as Danish is from Swedish . After a vote in July 2004, a separate language version was set up on Nynorsk. Thereupon the no.Wikipedians decided by a narrow majority to only allow articles on Bokmål (and Riksmål ).

Skanwiki

The two Norwegian Wikipedias cooperate with the Danish language Wikipedia and the Swedish Wikipedia within the transnational project Skanwiki . An example of this collaboration is the presentation of the “Scandinavian article of the day” on the main page. In a rotation principle, a different article worth reading is presented daily in Danish , Swedish , Bokmål or Nynorsk , which makes mutual intelligibility within the closely related Scandinavian languages possible.

Wikimedia

The Norwegian Wikipedia websites and all other language versions of the free Internet encyclopedia are operated by the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, USA. In Wikimedia Norge , the chapter (national association) of Norwegian Wikipedians, the Bokmål speakers are in the vast majority. The founding meeting took place on June 23, 2007, chaired by Hans Rosbach.