Re: [Wikipedia-l] no: or nb: (again)

I don't recall saying all Bokmål users are Nynorskhaters. I simply said that this certain person was a nynorsk hater, by which I meant that they /sounded to me/ like a Nynorsk hater. Many people will deny that any prejudices against Nynrosk exist in Norway, but if Nynorsk is your primary language it soon becomes obvious. Most of the time, it is due to people resenting having to learn Nynorsk in school when they saw little practical use for it. Similarly in the US, when schools were first integrated, sometimes people were made to drive a really long time to go to a school that was primarily of the other race, and this often unintentionally breeded hate. There are certainly many Bokmål users without such a prejudice, but when you talk with somebody about the different varieties of Norwegian it quickly becomes apparent. Things like using "standard Norwegian" or "normal Norwegian" for Bokmål, a sort of obvious resentment that may not be stated outright, repeatedly belittling Nynorsk, sometimes indicating that Nynorsk is bad or worthless, sometimes saying outright that they hate Nynorsk, and almost always showing a clear dominating attitude towards Nynorsk. There are also different levels of prejudice. Some people dislike Nynorsk with a passion (read: hate), others don't like it much but don't mind, and some just have an unconcious aversion to it but have no real problem with it. In foreign universities that teach Norwegian, by asking the professors if they include any teaching about Nynorsk, and if they don't why not, it will quickly become apparent whether 1. they are a regular user of nynorsk, 2. they prefer bokmål but have no problem with nynorsk, or 3. have a prejudice against Nynorsk. In my experience most fall into the first and second categories, and most offer at least some matieral for learning Nynorsk, but there is a minority that teaches their students that Nynorsk is bad, insignificant, inferior, and to be avoided. When it comes down to it, they are both equally official in the state of Norway. Nynorsk has less people that prefer it, but it is not a 10%-90% division or anything else extreme like that; it is somewhere between 20-80 and 30-70, and there are a great number of people who use both regularly but prefer Bokmål. Interestingly, the number of people who speak a dialect of Norwegian which is grammatically and lexically closer to Nynorsk than to Bokmål is much higher than the number of people that actually prefer to write and read Nynorsk. Mark On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 02:14:16 +0100, Lars Alvik <larsal(a)stud.ntnu.no> wrote: