Between 10 and 15 percent of Norwegians (primarily in the west around the city of Bergen) have Nynorsk as their official language form, estimated by the number of students attending secondary schools.

With the independence of Norway from Denmark, Danish became a foreign language and thus lost much of its prestige, and a conservative, written form of Norwegian, Landsmål, had been developed by 1850.

This project was later abandoned[5][8] and Nynorsk and Bokmål remain the two officially sanctioned standards of what is today called the Norwegian language.

The official standard of Nynorsk has been significantly altered during the process to create the common language form Samnorsk.

Ivar Aasen-sambandet is an umbrella organization of associations and individuals promoting the use of Høgnorsk, whereas Noregs Mållag and Norsk Målungdom advocate the use of Nynorsk in general.

The Landsmål (Landsmaal) language standard was constructed by the Norwegian linguist Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian-based alternative to Danish, which was commonly written, and to some extent spoken, in Norway at the time.

In 1646, however, Christen Jensøn (1610-1653), born in Askvoll, Norway, released a dictionary which documented the Nynorsk language in Sunnfjord.

[11] In 1749, Erik Pontoppidan released a dictionary of Norwegian words that were incomprehensible to Danish people, Glossarium Norvagicum Eller Forsøg paa en Samling Af saadanne rare Norske Ord Som gemeenlig ikke forstaaes af Danske Folk, Tilligemed en Fortegnelse paa Norske Mænds og Qvinders Navne.

Ivar Aasen, however, favoured a more radical approach, based on the principle that the spoken language of people living in the Norwegian countryside, who made up the vast majority of the population, should be regarded as more Norwegian than that of upper-middle class city-dwellers, who for centuries had been substantially influenced by the Danish language and culture.

Aasen's work is based on the idea that Norwegian dialects had a common structure that made them a separate language alongside Danish and Swedish.

In order to abstract this structure from the variety of dialects, he developed some basic criteria, which he called the most perfect form.

With the advent and growth of mass media, exposure to the standard languages increased, and Bokmål's position is dominant in many situations.

For instance, during the 2005 election, the Norwegian Young Conservatives made an advertisement where a candidate for parliament threw a copy of the Nynorsk dictionary into a barrel of flames.

[20] As for counties, three have declared Nynorsk as their official standard: Møre og Romsdal, Telemark and Vestland.

In the Sunnmøre region of Møre og Romsdal, all municipalities (except the Bokmål-majority Ålesund) have stated Nynorsk as the official standard.

Written Nynorsk is found in all the same types of places and for the same uses (newspapers, commercial products, computer programs, etc.)

Most of the biggest newspapers in Norway have certain articles written in Nynorsk, like VG and Aftenposten,[23] but are mainly Bokmål.

Many local newspapers have also chosen Nynorsk as the only language form of publication, like Firdaposten, Hallingdølen, Hordaland and Bø blad.

Many newspapers are also officially neutral, conforming to either Nynorsk or Bokmål in an article as they see fit, like Klassekampen and Bergens Tidende.

Many computer programs and apps that serve the whole country often present a choice between Bokmål and Nynorsk, especially those produced by the Norwegian government.

These laws are in order to keep Nynorsk and Bokmål as equals, which has been seen as an important case since the creation of the language forms.

Normed Nynorsk speech is mostly used in scripted contexts, like news broadcasts from television stations, such as NRK and TV2.

[29] At the same time, it is not uncommon for dialect speakers to use a register closer to the Nynorsk writing standard when deemed suitable, especially in formal contexts.

As for adjectives and determiners, the list of words with a feminine inflection form are quite few compared to those for the masculine and neuter after the 2012 language revision.

Unlike Bokmål, Nynorsk has a more marked difference between strong and weak verbs—a common pattern in dialects across Norway.

[51] As can be shown from the conjugation tables, the removal of the vocal ending of the infinitive creates the imperative form of the verb kjøp deg ei ny datamaskin!

Nynorsk has two different forms that separate this meaning for the verb slå (slåast and slåst), but in the general case it does not.

Nynorsk solves this general ambiguity by mainly allowing a reflexive meaning, which is also the construction that has the most historical legacy behind it.

A dictionary will usually show an inflection table if the verb is reflexive, and if it is passive the only allowed form is the word alone with an -ast suffix.

Aasen originally included these ts in his Landsmål norms, but since these are silent in the dialects, it was struck out in the first officially issued specification of Nynorsk of 1901.