Tag Archives: bokmål
Meet the Monster Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Oct 31, 2015
Monsteret er løs! (The monster is ”loose”!) Right now, it is doing everything it can to prevent you from learning norsk! Men fortvil ikke… (But don’t despair…) There is a way to get through Halloween alive… First of all, you must kjenne din fiende (know your enemy)! Of course, the Norwegian night is full of demons……
Norwegian Plurals are your friends Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Oct 16, 2015
In Norwegian, as in English, some ord [ore] (words) have surprise plurals… liten – små (little [something] – little [somethings]) mann – menn (man – men) gås – gjess (goose – geese) fot – føtter (foot – feet) bok – bøker (book – books) natt – netter (night – nights) strand – strender (beach –…
Norwegians Speak Dialects Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Mar 15, 2015
”I don’t understand people who speak Nynorsk Norwegian, why can’t they just switch to Bokmål Norwegian?” Now and then, readers ask such things. I’ve written about the nynorsk/bokmål split before. Of course, it may still be confusing for new learners of Norwegian. So, I’d like to set the record straight as simply as I can…
Norwegian Egozones Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Aug 30, 2014
This is going to be the egoistical post. We all need to talk about ourselves now and then, so we need a word for ”I”. This is easy enough in written Norwegian – jeg (let’s stick to bokmål for the time being!) Jeg lærer norsk. (I’m learning Norwegian.) If you’ve ever heard somebody saying jeg…
A Taste Of Nynorsk Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jan 27, 2013
Last week you learnt that there are two ways to write Norwegian: bokmål (”book language”) and nynorsk (”new Norwegian”). Bokmål ultimately hails from (upper-class) urban dialects and Danish, while nynorsk is based on rural dialects. Most Norwegians use bokmål, and that is also the Norwegian we teach here at Transparent. Nevertheless, since quite a few Norwegians do write in…
The Two Flavours of Norwegian Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jan 20, 2013
As some of you may know, there are two kinds of Norwegian: bokmål and nynorsk. (Okay, I’ve promised you this post for a while now!) There’s no need to worry – these are just two different ways of writing the same language. I mean, even English-speakers can’t agree on whether the mix of black and white should be…
The Third Gender Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Aug 1, 2012
No, this isn’t about LGTB people in Norway, but about an aspect of Norwegian grammar that ocassionally creates confusion, even among Norwegians: the feminine gender. Norwegian comes in thousands of dialect shades, so in order to write it, two orthographies or “written languages” have evolved: nynorsk (which will be the topic of a future blog…