Editing Norwegian dialects (section)

==== Dative case ====
The original Germanic contextual difference between the [[dative]] and [[accusative]] cases, standardized in [[modern German]] and [[modern Icelandic|Icelandic]], has degenerated in spoken [[Danish language|Danish]] and [[Swedish language|Swedish]], a tendency which spread to Bokmål too. [[Ivar Aasen]] treated the dative case in detail in his work, ''[[Norsk Grammatik]]'' (1848), and use of Norwegian dative as a living grammatical case can be found in a few of the earliest [[Nynorsk#Ivar Aasen's work|Landsmål]] texts. However, the dative case has never been part of official Landsmål/Nynorsk.

It is, however, present in some spoken dialects north of Oslo, Romsdal, and south and northeast of Trondheim. The grammatical phenomenon is highly threatened in the mentioned areas, while most speakers of conservative varieties have been highly influenced by the national standard languages, using only the traditional accusative word form in both cases. Often, though not always, the difference in meaning between the dative and accusative word forms can thus be lost, requiring the speaker to add more words to specify what was actually meant, to avoid potential loss of information.