Source material
Norsk Ordbok is unusual in the European context because it integrates spoken and written language. It is therefore a combined written language and dialect dictionary. However, this combination is a natural one in the context of the Nynorsk dictionary tradition, as the written language of Nynorsk is almost inconceivable without Ivar Aasen’s original documentation of Norwegian dialects. Indeed, the first Nynorsk dictionaries can be regarded as the first documentary evidence of dialects in Norway.
The dictionaries of Ivar Aasen and Hans Ross provide the basic material for Norsk Ordbok. Work began with the compilation of these and other dictionaries that were then developed to produce a core manuscript in the 1930s and 1940s. The content of Norsk Ordbok was supplemented in a variety of ways with the creation of a paper archive or slip file.
Today the slip file contains around 3.2 million sheets of paper. In addition to the words themselves there is information about the source, inflection, localisation and the person who provided the information. From written sources the slip file includes words from, for example:
- The oldest Norwegian dialect and word collections from the Danish period (approx. 1650-1850)
- Nynorsk fiction representeted by both classic and more recent authors
- Nynorsk non-fiction and textbooks
- Newspapers, periodicals and magazines wholly or partly written in Nynorsk
- Nynorskordboka – a single-volume definition dictionary with 90 000 headwords
- Nynorsk technical dictionaries
- The Bible and hymn writing
From oral sources the archive contains, for example:
- Words sent in by approximately 600 local people from different parts of the country. These are traditional dialect words.
- Words which are registered with the Norwegian Dialect Archive at UiO
- Around 90 printed dialect dictionaries from all over the country
- Private slip files/collections of dialect words
All vocabulary which is available electronically has been collected into a single electronic catalogue. We call this catalogue the Meta Dictionary.
In 2002 Norsk Ordbok started to build up an important supplement to the traditional paper archive; an electronic text corpus with the emphasis on modern Nynorsk texts. The corpus now contains around 32 million words which you can search using the Internet. The corpus contains texts from daily newspapers, journals, non-fiction and fiction, both for adults and children. You can find textual contexts for every entry, from which you can judge the level of use and distribution. ¨
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