Brunost: a Nynorsk programming language that wears waffles like a badge

What is Brunost?

Brunost is a tiny, opinionated programming language written in—of all things—Nynorsk. The name nods to Norway’s beloved brown goat cheese: smooth, a little sweet, and impossible not to mention at breakfast. It has been reported that the language is interpreted, functional in flavor, and that the interpreter is written in Zig; the author even boasts it’s “blazingly fast-ish.” Who builds a language to force you to use a minority written form? The creator, apparently. Cute, a bit brazen, and undeniably Norwegian.

Features and quirks

The language enforces Nynorsk for identifiers and ships with a Nynorsk dictionary used during interpretation; it has been reported that anything not matching the dictionary triggers a clear error. Keywords are charmingly literal: fast for immutable bindings, endreleg to mark mutability, viss and ellers for conditionals, and gjevTilbake for return. Types are described as loose, functions are first-class, and yes—the author jokes that “Python and JavaScript are going down!” Take that with a grain of brunost. You can allegedly try it in your browser right now; experiment, break things, enjoy the novelty.

Why this matters

This is more than a toy with a tasty name. It’s part playful experiment, part cultural statement: a push to put a written language into a developer workflow, to make Nynorsk visible in code where it’s rarely the default. Is it gatekeeping? Maybe. Is it charming and useful for folks who want to code in their mother tongue? Absolutely. Either way, Brunost is a reminder that programming languages are cultural artifacts too — and sometimes, a language wants to be as proudly local as your grandma’s waffle recipe.

Sources: lindbakk.com, Lobsters