Comments:

1. 

    

   BM:

   Den -et gruppa kan også slutte med -a i preteritumet:
   vaske – vasker – vaska – vaska
   danse – danser – dansa – dansa

   Flest folk bruker den -a formen muntlig, men kanskje flere bruker den -et formen skriftlig?

2. 

    

   Kari:

   Isn’t the ‘a’ ending instead of the ‘et’ ending on a verb essentially slang or at least not traditional bokmål? The Norwegians I have heard use that are either from western Norway, northern Norway, or central Norway, and thus do not typically speak traditional bokmål anyway. Correct me if I am wrong please, BM.

3. 

    

   BM:

   “Isn’t the ‘a’ ending instead of the ‘et’ ending on a verb essentially slang or at least not traditional bokmål?”

   The -a ending has been on an equal footing with the -et ending since the 1938 reform (it may have been valid earlier, but as a side-form). It’s not slang, it’s the result of different sound changes happening in Norwegian compared to Danish (or at least most of Norwegian to most of Danish). It wouldn’t normally be used in traditional bokmål (although there is on-going research around this outlined in Språknytt), being more at home in the radical form.

   “The Norwegians I have heard use that are either from western Norway, northern Norway, or central Norway, and thus do not typically speak traditional bokmål anyway.”

   Oslo dialect uses the -a form. I can’t really speak for other dialects in the east, unfortunately.

   You’re right that they don’t speak bokmål, but many write using bokmål (especially in the larger towns/cities [Bergen for example]). No-one in Norway (or very very few people) actually speak bokmål, or nynorsk for that matter. These languages are for written use only. Many people speak forms of Norwegian which a closer to one or the other, of course, but no-one, not even Sunnmøringer, speaks a one of them.