Svorsk

Svorsk or Svorska is a term describing a mixture of the Swedish and Norwegian languages.

The word itself is a portmanteau mixture of those two languages, "sv" is taken from the Swedish word "svenska" and/or the Norwegian word "svensk" (which means "Swedish", implying on the spoken/written language) and "orsk"/"orska" is taken from the Norwegian word "norsk" and/or the Swedish word "norska" (meaning "Norwegian", also here implying on the spoken/written language). The term is used to describe the language of someone (almost exclusively a Swedish or Norwegian person) who mixes words from his or her native tongue with the other language. The phenomenon is not uncommon, especially in light of the close business and trade ties between the two countries [ [http://www.regjeringen.no/nn/dep/fad/Dokument/NOU-ar/2004/NOU-2004-5/6/1/1.html?id=38486 "Næringsstruktur i Norge" - from the website of the Norwegian government] ] [ [http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/5472/a/42502 "Sveriges förbindelser med Norge" - from the website of the Swedish government] ] and the mutual intelligibility between the two languages, the latter in its turn being due to the common ancestry and parallel development of both Norwegian and Swedish from Old Norse (see North Germanic languages). The term originates from the 1970s.

Individual Swedish loanwords and phrases that are assimilated into the Norwegian language are called "svecisms" ("svesismer"). This trend has been ongoing since the dissolution of the Dano-Norwegian Union in 1814, however it gained momentum substantially after the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905 and has been an ongoing phenomenon of Norwegian linguistics, and still is. Indeed, the prominent Norwegian linguist Finn-Erik Vinje characterizes this influx since the second world war as a breaking wave. [ [http://www.sprakrad.no/nb-no/Toppmeny/Publikasjoner/Spraaknytt/Arkivet/2004/2/Svesismer/ «Der lå vi et folk bag, et andet berømmeligt rige» Om svesismer i unionstiden 1814–1905] by Finn-Erik Vinje of the Norwegian Language Council. "Page visited December 19, 2007"]

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