The sound system of Norwegian resembles that of Swedish. There is considerable variation among the dialects, and all pronunciations are considered by official policy to be equally correct – there is no official spoken standard, although it can be said that Eastern Norwegian Bokmål speech (not Norwegian Bokmål in general) has an unofficial spoken standard, called Urban East Norwegian or Standard East Norwegian (), loosely based on the speech of the literate classes of the Oslo area. This variant is the most common one taught to foreign students. Despite there being no official standard variety of Norwegian, Urban East Norwegian has traditionally been used in public venues such as theatre and TV, although today local dialects are used extensively in spoken and visual media. The background for this lack of agreement is that after the dissolution of Denmark–Norway in 1814, the upper classes would speak in what was perceived as the Danish language, which gradually fell out of favour with the rise of Norwegian romantic nationalism. In addition, Bergen, not Oslo, was the larger and more influential city in Norway until the 19th century. See the article on the Norwegian language conflict for further information. Unless noted otherwise, this article describes the phonology of Urban East Norwegian. The spelling is always Bokmål. Consonants are laminal , either alveolar or denti-alveolar . are aspirated fully voiceless , whereas are unaspirated, either fully voiceless or partially voiced . After within the same syllable, only unaspirated voiceless stops occur. is dentalized laminal alveolar or (uncommonly) non-retracted apical alveolar . is pronounced with protruded lips . The degree of protrusion depends on the rounding of the following vowel. is a (usually voiceless) fricative. The friction is normally glottal , but sometimes it is dorsal: palatal when near front vowels, velar near back vowels. It can be voiced between two voiced sounds. are partially voiced or fully voiceless when they occur after (but not when precedes within the same syllable). The flap is also partially voiced or fully voiceless when it occurs postvocalically before . The approximants may be realized as fricatives : is sometimes a fricative, especially before a pause and in emphatic pronunciation. There is not an agreement about the frequency of occurrence of the fricative allophone of : states that is sometimes a fricative. states that the fricative variant of occurs often, especially before and after close vowels and in energetic pronunciation.