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Tag Archives: dialects

17 Things to Love about Norway Posted by on May 17, 2020

Gratulerer med dagen! (Happy May 17th!) Today Norwegians all over the world are celebrating their grunnlov (constitution – from 1814). This year, of course, is very different. Most of the fun 17. mai-tog (May 17th parades) have been cancelled. 🙁 Instead, children and adults have to celebrate hjemme [YEMMeh] (at home). Let’s join the celebrations…

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Norwegian Plurals are your friends Posted by 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 –…

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Norwegians Speak Dialects Posted by 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…

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Norwegian Egozones Posted by 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…

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The Third Gender Posted by 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…

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