It is my personal belief that the Norwegian language is more logical than English-it just makes more sense to me. I’ve said before that I had a native Norwegian professor in college who said that the Norwegian language is barbaric, it’s simple. She is absolutely right. I would like to share a list of words with you that I think exemplify this opinion.
-flyplass (airport) literally translates to “plane place”
–tannlege (dentist) literally translates to “tooth doctor”
–skrivebord (desk) literally translates to “write table”
–
(improve) literally translates to “for better”
–sommerfugl (butterly) literally translates to “summer bird”–ok this one isn’t so obvious, but “summer bird” makes more sense than “butterfly”
–høsttakkfest (Thanksgiving) literally translates to “fall thanks fest”
–lovbrudd (offense) literally translates to “law break”
–lastebil (truck) literally translates to “load car”
–frokostblanding (cereal) literally translates to “breakfast mixture”
–avreise (departure) literally translates to “off travel” or “from travel”
–helligdag (holiday) means “holy day,” and while all holidays aren’t religious, it makes more sense to me to combine two actual words (holy and day)
–ordbok (dictionary) literally translates to “word book”
–datamaskin (computer) literally translates to “data machine” (as is fairly obvious…)
–gressklipper (lawn mower) literally translates to “grass cutter.” Why create more words, such as mow? And you don’t really cut the whole lawn, just the grass.
–førskole (nursery school) literally translates to “before school”
–medhjelper (assistant) literally translates to “with helper”
–tresko (clog) literally translates to “wooden shoe”
–nålevende (contemporary) literally translates to “now living”
–etterkommer (descendant) literally translates to “after comer”
What do you think? It sure seems like we have created a lot more words than we really need. How come we didn’t combine more words to form compound words like Norwegian?
Comments:
Jake:
Interesting post! German is very similar. For example desk is “Schreibtisch”, which likewise translates to “Write table”; Dictionary is “Wörterbuch” (“Book of Words”); Zahnartz is a combination of “zahn”=”tooth” and “Arzt”=”doctor”. But I may say, the Norwegian grammar is much simpler than German.
Neil Lucock:
German has the same logical structure, they have words that go on for a whole sentence!
The French think their language is very logical too, but “logical” depends on the thought processes your language forces you to use. Latin’s “verb at the end” seems alien to English-thinkers, perhaps not so strange to German-thinkers.
BM:
Norwegian is not a logical language. A logical language is one in which it would be impossible to make ambiguous clauses.
Put eska på bordet ved vinduet.i kjøkkenet.
-Put the box on the table by the window in the kitchen.
Is the box on the table by the window now, and I should move it to the kitchen, or is the box on the table now, and I should move it to the window in the kitchen?
Jeg kastet en kopp mot en tallerken, og den ble knust.
-I threw a cup against a plate, and it broke.
What broke? The cup or the plate?
—
I think the word you’re looking for here, based on examples given, is “transparent” (as opposed to “opaque”). Norwegian isn’t very transparent (mor, far, bror, søster, datter, sønn are unrelated words, for example), but is generally much more transparent than English, I’ll agree. My favourite example of this is the word “hungernød”, which means “famine”, or, more literally, “hunger emergency”. “Famine”, on the other hand, require you to know a bit of Latin. Frankly, it looks to me like it’s related to “family” (which of course it isn’t).
“forbedre” doesn’t literally mean “for better”. “for” is a prefix borrowed from Low German. “forbedre” literally means “to make better”.
“butterfly” is quite transparent, if you’ve ever seen a butterfly’s excrement (it’s coloured like butter).
“høsttakkfest” is a neologism. It’s not too remarkable that it’s transparent, just like many English language neologisms (starfruit, for example). Interestingly, “høsttakkfest” gets only five hits on google, two of which come from here.
“avreise” together with “ankomme” are worthy of remark since they are interchangeable with “reise” and “komme” respectively. They mean the same thing. “av” and “an” here are just Low German affectations.
English “holiday” has exactly the same derivation as “helligdag”. The spelling changed when the word became one unit, and stress shifted to the first syllable. I’ve also heard “røde dager” for “helligdag”.
“mow” has been attested as far back as Old English. It’s not a new word by any stretch of the imagination. The lawn is the grass, attested back to the 1700s in writing.
“førskole” have I never heard before. In my experience, “barnehage” is much more common, which literally mean “child garden”, which is about as transparent as “nursery” (and indeed means the same thing).
English does compound quite a bit, though. We’re also fond of portmanteau(s/x?) , we just generally don’t write them with spaces in between. They’re still one lexical item, though.
Steve Spencer:
When looking at how logical (or illogical) a language is, it’s only fair to compare it in reference to other languages. I feel that in many ways, as you point on, the compound words in Norwegian do make a lot of logical sense.
Learning Norwegian as a second language, I really like the consistency of the sounds made by each letter, as compared to English. But I gotta say, why so many ways to produce the “sh” sound, and why so many darned silent letters? From a spelling perspective, actually think Spanish has a leg up on Norwegian, but that both of them beat out English.
Jaime Cabrera Letona:
Is there anywhere some application to listen the correct pronunciation in norway language?
Shoo:
Hi, I’m English with a Norwegian Mother who never spoke Norsk at home. Now, In my fifities, jeg laerer litt Norsk. Thanks for your blog which puts many things into context for me.
I think the reason we use a word like Lawn Mower in English is because English is a great language for marketing and creating dreams.
Why would you have a grass-cutter when you can have a lawn mower and imagine your tiny back yard is the same as a country house lawn where the butler serves afternoon tea in the summer?
BM:
@Steve
Compound words would make sense in any language! Although some of them do require a little bit more work than others. I remember reading the phrase “gjestfritt hotell”, which looked to me like it meant a hotel without any guests. It actually means a hotel which really likes having guests.
There are three ways to write the “sj” (sh) sound: sj, skj, and sk (but only before i or y). The simple answer as to why this is, is that once upon a time they were all pronounced differently, but the sounds merged together. In Bergen, sj, skj, sk-, and kj, k- have merged into one sound.
There aren’t many silent letters, merely letters which are silent in whatever dialect you’re learning. Usually, if the letter is there, then one or other dialect will pronounce it. The -d in hund is pronounced in Sunnmøre, for example. There’s also the historical reasons to take into account, too.
If you study Norwegian further, you’ll find that not only are there letters which are written, but not pronounced in some dialects, but also sounds which are pronounced but not written. Snø, for example, is pronounce snøv in Sunnmøre. Sau, is pronounced saud, and a little further inland, sauth. The verb å leie has a -g- in the middle of it in most of Western Norway, too.
@Jaime
http://nettradio.nrk.no/default.php?kanal=p1
^^ Online radio from the national broadcasting agency.
Lasse:
The best Norwegian word is, without a shadow of a doubt, “grønnsak”, which means vegetable.
It literally translates as “green thing”. How down to earth is that?
jacob hansen:
irealy like to learn about this stuff its cool o and i just went in to 6th grade o yeah
Elaine:
The reason why English has so many words for similar objects or functions is down to its long history of invasion and immersion in other languages. Being a tiny island we have been invaded many times, with each conquering invader bringing their languages with them. Even today, regional colloquialisms contain words from ancient invaders prevalent in that area. For instance, there are many Norse words found in northern England due to Viking invasions. In the south-west, King Alfred’s ‘Wessex, Saxon/Old English words are predominant. Then you have the P and Q Celtic languages of Wales, Cornwall and Gaelic, existing prior to the Roman Empire’s invasion. Words such as ‘trousers’ (pants to some) stems from Welsh. Rome and Christianity brought Latin words and 1066 brought the Normans and their Norman French. English evolved and absorbed all these influences, which is why it has odd grammar rules, odd silent letter combinations, no gender divided verbs and several words for the same thing!
Ruth:
Its not words that I have a problem with its The grammar!!
allan twidt:
JEI SNAKKE NORSK?
S00LIN:
Ja, jeg snakker norsk!
(correct)
Bjørn A. Bojesen:
@S00LIN Så bra! 🙂
Kristina:
English is not my mother tongue . when i was learning English all the grammar and vocabulary simply made sense and just clicked in . Norwegian, however , is so unnatural and mechanical that I started to actually search whether it’s just me or more people sharing this view and why so. I have past norskprøve 3 and got B2 in all parts after 1 years evening course. But still when I use it at work daily and in shops, now almost 2 years on I still kind of have this robotic and artificial sense to it. I use the lingo daily at work, I constantly read books on Norsk grammar , got monolingual synonym dictionaries ,watch norsk tv and listen to radio . I wonder if this language will ever come as natural as English does. ?