Ivar Aasen og svensk leksikografi

Resumé

In the language project of Ivar Aasen (1813–1896) an important aspect was to demonstrate that Norwegian was a national language in its own right, alongside Danish and Swedish. In his lexicographical work Aasen used a Danish model, but he emphasized that, from a linguistic point of view, Norwegian actually had just as much in common with Swedish. In this article we present a study that demonstrates the dimension of the specific common vocabulary between the two languages. The method used for this purpose is to extract references to Swedish sources in Aasen’s 1873 edition of his dictionary. The study reveals that 7.5% of the vocabulary is common, and that Aasen mainly refers to two Swedish sources (Dalin 1855 and Rietz 1867). Not surprisingly, a significant part of this common vocabulary mostly occurs geographically along the Swedish border. The conclusion is that Aasen’s ideas regarding a common vocabulary for Norwegian and Swedish are to a certain extent verified. But more importantly, the still rather sparse occurrence justifies the establishment of Norwegian as a distinct language of its own.