Originally posted by: alek_d https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/9169298
You are about to learn Norwegian (Bokmål). What is this thing in parentheses, «Bokmål»?
Norwegian has two official written standards: Bokmål (lit. «book language») and Nynorsk (lit. «New Norwegian»). All Norwegians understand both, they're not that different and you are taught both at school. We will be teaching Bokmål. It is by far the most widely used, more than 85 percent of Norwegians prefer Bokmål and most national publications are in Bokmål.
Both Bokmål and Nynorsk have a great variety of optional forms. That can be quite confusing for a language learner. So in this course we have chosen to teach the forms suggested by the style guide from NTB, a Norwegian press agency, which is used by many newspapers. This form of Bokmål is called Moderate or Conservative Bokmål. When you write, you can use any of the optional forms.
Norwegian does not have an official spoken standard. Speaking in your own dialect and accent is perfectly fine in most contexts, though most unconsciously adapt the way they speak a little when they speak with people from other districts dropping hard-to-understand dialect words and so on.
In television and radio news and weather forecasts from NRK, a national public broadcaster, journalists speak Bokmål and Nynorsk in their own accent. If they come from Eastern Norway, what they speak is then «Standard Østnorsk» («Standard East-Norwegian»). You will hear that a lot, since this is the most populous part of the country and the part where Oslo, the capital where NRK is headquartered, happens to be.
Standard Østnorsk is what you'll hear Duolingo's robot (TTS) speak and also in most other Norwegian classes.
If you would like to hear some other some other dialects you could head over to the Computer-Assisted Listening and Speaking Tutor (CALST) developed by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. It offers you several possible dialects including Standard Østnorsk. If you struggle with listening and speaking, it might be a good idea to go there anyway.
Standard Østnorsk is also spoken out in the real world. It is not strictly speaking a dialect, rather a sociolect. It is used all over Eastern Norway along the local dialects and some people consciously or unconsciously slide between the two depending on context. In some areas there are more Standard Østnorsk speakers than in others. In Oslo, it has largely replaced both the local dialect and the defunct «Dannet Dagligtale» (Cultivated Everyday Speech).
Standard Østnorsk is not officially sanctioned as a standard, and is rarely used outside of Eastern Norway, but it is the closest we get to the UK's RP. Like RP has its fans and detractors, some think it sounds educated and sophisticated, others regard it negatively as snobbish and stuck-up. As a learner of Norwegias as foreign language you don't have to worry about that, most people will salute for making the effort to learn Norwegian and you will probably bring with you a charming hint of your own native accent.