Abstract
Norway has two official written language varieties: Bokmål (DanoNorwegian) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian). Normally, all Norwegian pupils must learn both varieties of the written Norwegian language in school, and at the end of secondary school, they obtain two separate grades in written Norwegian. However, one of the varieties is considered to be and is taught as the main written language, whereas the other variety is the second or alternative written language.
 Approximately 85 percent of the pupils in school have the DanoNorwegian variety as their main written language and many of these pupils develop antipathies toward the other variety with the result that they do not master it very well at the end of secondary school. In fact, many pupils achieve better results in English than in the alternative variety of their own so-called mother tongue.
 In this paper, I will discuss some of the challenges that are related to learning Nynorsk in the Norwegian educational system and society. With reference to Norton (2013) and others, I will argue that these challenges may actually be best understood from the perspectives of identity, social power, motivation, investment and second language acquisition.
Highlights
This paper was presented at the third international conference “Educational Role of Language” (ERL) at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences in Vilnius in June 2018 (ERL 3, 2018)
When preparing for this third ERL conference, I decided to have a more theoretical perspective on the topic of my presentation than at the first ERL conference (Haugan 2016, 2017) where I discussed whether Norwegian Nynorsk as an alternative written variety should be seen as the first language (L1) for Norwegian pupils or rather as a second language (L2)
The ERL network has established certain premises for its research activities: Considering the fact(s) that every school determines what students think OF language, i.e. students’ LANGUAGE BELIEFS how students feel ABOUT language, i.e. students’ LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE what students do WITH language, i.e. students’ LANGUAGE ACTIVITY how students perceive THROUGH language, i.e. students’ LANGUAGE MATRICES on the level of an individual, society, culture and reality, [...]
Summary
This paper was presented at the third international conference “Educational Role of Language” (ERL) at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences in Vilnius in June 2018 (ERL 3, 2018) When preparing for this third ERL conference, I decided to have a more theoretical perspective on the topic of my presentation than at the first ERL conference (Haugan 2016, 2017) where I discussed whether Norwegian Nynorsk as an alternative written variety should be seen as the first language (L1) for Norwegian pupils or rather as a second language (L2). 85 percent of Norwegian pupils have the Dano-Norwegian variety (Bokmål) as their main written language and many of these pupils develop antipathies toward the other variety (Nynorsk) with the result that they do not master it very well at the end of secondary school. I will try to show that these terms could explain why many pupils manage to learn English as a second language rather well while at the same time they meet greater obstacles when it comes to learning Nynorsk as a variety of the first language
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