Philip Holmes and Hans-Olav Enger. Norwegian. A Comprehensive Grammar

The book under review is the outcome of collaborative work by two of well-known linguists representing different grammatical traditions, who nevertheless complement one other quite well. It offers a valuable source of information about the grammar of modern Norwegian in the Bokmål standard and about the orthographic rules that apply to this variant of the language. As the authors themselves stress in the Preface of their grammar, “this is the first attempt to write a truly comprehensive English-language grammar of Bokmål” (p. ix), and in this respect it is indeed a unique publication. This makes it very practical for learners, particularly given the scope of the use of the Bokmål standard among Norwegian speakers – as the authors themselves estimate, “a reasonable guess is that 7 out of 8 Norwegians write Bokmål” (p. 2).