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Nynorsk uses several letters with diacritic signs: é, è, ê, ó, ò, â, and ô. The diacritic signs are not compulsory, but can be added to clarify the meaning of words (homonyms) that would otherwise be identical. One example is ein gut ("a boy") versus éin gut ("one boy"). Loanwords may be spelled with other diacritics, most notably ü, á, à and é,^{[citation needed]} following the conventions of the original language. The Norwegian vowels æ, ø and å never take diacritics.

Bokmål is mostly spelled without diacritic signs. The only exception is one word of Norwegian origin, namely fôr, to be distinguished from for (see below) as well as any subsequent compound words, eg kåpefôr (coat lining) and dyrefôr (animal feed). There are also a small number of words in Norwegian which use the acute accent. The words are allé (avenue), diaré (diarrhea), kafé (cafe), idé (idea), entré (entrance), komité (committee), kupé (compartment), moské (mosque), supé (supper), trofé (trophy) and diskré (discreet). An acute accent can also be used to differentiate en (a) from én (one) eg. én gutt (one boy) en gutt (a boy).

The diacritic signs in use include the acute accent, grave accent and the circumflex. A common example of how the diacritics change the meaning of a word, is for:

• for (preposition. for or to), pronounced [ˈfɔrː]
• fór (verb. went, in the sense left), pronounced [ˈfuːr]
• fòr (noun. furrow, only Nynorsk), pronounced [ˈfɔːr]
• fôr (noun. fodder), pronounced [ˈfuːr], the circumflex indicating the elision of the edh from the Norse spelling (foðr → fôr; veðr → vêr)
• fôr (noun lining, as in a garment)

Also used is the cedille, but only on a c in loanwords, indicating the c should be pronounced as an s.

• Françoise
• provençalsk
• Curaçao

A macron-like diacritic can be used for decorative purposes both in handwritten and computed Bokmål and Nynorsk or to denote vowel length such as in dū (you), lā (infinitive form of to let), lēser (present form of "to read") and lūft (air). The diacritic is entirely optional, carries no IPA value and is seldom used in modern Norwegian outside of handwriting.

History

The letter Å (HTML å) was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing Aa or aa. The new letter came from the Swedish alphabet, where it has been in official use since the 16th century. Similarly, the letter Å was introduced in Danish in 1948, but the final decision on its place in the alphabet was not made. The initial proposal was to place it first, before A. Its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was decided in 1955. The former digraph Aa still occurs in personal names, and in Danish geographical names. In Norway, geographical names tend to follow the current orthography, meaning that the letter å will be used. Family names may not follow modern orthography, and therefore retain the digraph aa where å would be used today. Aa remains in use as a transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons. Aa is treated like Å in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent letters A, meaning that while a is the first letter of the alphabet, aa is the last. In Norwegian (but not in Danish), this rule does not apply to non-Scandinavian names, so a modern atlas would list the German city of Aachen under A, but list the Danish town of Aabenraa under Å. In Danish, the aa rule is applied, as long as it denotes one sound, for example German Aachen or Dutch kraal, but if it denotes 2 sounds like in ekstraarbejde (extra work), the two as are sorted as two.

The difference between the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variant Ä instead of Æ, and the variant Ö instead of Ø, similarly to German. Also, the collating order for these three letters is different in Swedish: Å, Ä, Ö. Æ and Ä are sorted together in all Scandinavian languages, as well as Finnish, and so are Ø and Ö.

In current Danish and Norwegian, W is recognized as a separate letter from V. In Danish, the transition was made in 1980^[