Growing numbers of Norwegians think the English language has become all too prevalent in advertising, according to a report from the Language Council of Norway.
The report also shows that fewer business executives and members of the public believe the use of English benefits sales.
However, Norwegian remains under “continual pressure from English in many areas of society”, according to the council’s 2012 status report.
In other findings, the report notes that the use of social media is likely to lead to changes in language usage that will gradually gain a foothold in the offline environment.
A large part of the report meanwhile is dedicated to Nynorsk, or New Norwegian, a language developed in the 19th century and still the less widely used of the two national tongues. A written alternative to Bokmål, the majority language, Nynorsk has lost ground as the language used in schools, the report says.
The newer language did however gain ground online, with the Nynorsk version of Wikipedia growing at the twice the rate of the Bokmål version in 2011, according to the Language Council.
Norwegian
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