{"id":1467,"date":"2012-09-30T22:59:12","date_gmt":"2012-09-30T22:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/?p=1467"},"modified":"2012-10-22T07:35:11","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T07:35:11","slug":"as-easy-as-aeoeaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/as-easy-as-aeoeaa\/","title":{"rendered":"As Easy As \u00c6\u00d8\u00c5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Alt er st\u00f8rre i USA.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Everything is bigger in the US<\/em>. That\u2019s what we Scandinavians often think when we\u2019re suffering from an attack of\u00a0<strong>mindreverdighetskompleks<\/strong>\u00a0(inferiority complex). The Americans have got bigger cars, houses, plains, trees and burgers than us. But wait\u2026 Is that always so? Norwegian\u00a0<strong>komikere<\/strong>\u00a0(comedians) Fridtjof Stens\u00e6th Josefsen and<br \/>\nJakob Sch\u00f8yen Andersen, of the TV2 programme\u00a0<em><strong>Kollektivet<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0(<em>The Shared House<\/em>), have made the shocking discovery that<br \/>\n<em>the Norwegian alphabet is about 12 % BIGGER than the English alphabet!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If you haven\u2019t already seen their music video, watch the YouTube video below. (And use the occasion to rehearse the pronunciation of \u00c6, \u00d8, \u00c5!)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kollektivet: Music Video - \u00c6\u00d8\u00c5 (Size Matters)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f488uJAQgmw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Funny, huh? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>As a matter of fact, there are many languages with longer alphabets than Norwegian \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.transparent.com\/learn-russian\">Russian<\/a>, for example, has 33 letters. (But let\u2019s not ruin the fun by nitpicking!)<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00c6<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>\u00d8<\/strong>\u00a0have been used in both Norway and Denmark since the Viking ages.\u00a0<strong>\u00d8<\/strong>\u00a0is also used on\u00a0<strong>F\u00e6r\u00f8yene<\/strong>\u00a0(the Faroe Islands), while\u00a0<strong>\u00c6<\/strong>\u00a0is employed in Icelandic and ocassionally in Greco-Latin (= English) words to make them look posh:\u00a0<em>encyclop\u00e6dia<\/em>. The letters emerged as medi\u00e6val monks experimented with fancy ways to join A+E as well as O+E. (These combinations were used to express special sounds to which the Latin alphabet did not cater.) The monks in Sweden (and Germany) preferred to write the E part\u00a0<em>above<\/em>\u00a0the other letter, creating the Swedish \u00c4 and \u00d6.<\/p>\n<p>This Swedish inclination to put accents\u00a0<em>above<\/em>\u00a0letters can also be seen in\u00a0<strong>\u00c5<\/strong>, which was invented in Sweden to express a rounded A sound \u2013 more or less like the\u00a0<em>awe<\/em>\u00a0part of\u00a0<em>awesome<\/em>. (\u00c5 pretty self-explanatory letter, don\u2019t you think? \ud83d\ude09 ) Back in the Viking Ages, the \u00c5 sound was pronounced as a long A sound (as in\u00a0<em>far, faar away<\/em>) in all the Scandinavian countries. For many centuries, it was therefore writen\u00a0<strong>AA<\/strong>\u00a0in Norwegian and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.transparent.com\/learn-danish\">Danish<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 even after the pronunciation had changed. \u201d<strong>B\u00e5ten til \u00c5lesund<\/strong>\u201d\u00a0(the boat to \u00c5lesund) was written \u201d<strong>baaten til Aalesund<\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In 1938, however, AA was officially replaced by \u00c5 in the Norwegian alphabet (in 1948, even in the Danish alphabet).<\/p>\n<p>\u00c6 \u2013 \u00d8 \u2013 \u00c5!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alt er st\u00f8rre i USA.\u00a0Everything is bigger in the US. That\u2019s what we Scandinavians often think when we\u2019re suffering from an attack of\u00a0mindreverdighetskompleks\u00a0(inferiority complex). The Americans have got bigger cars, houses, plains, trees and burgers than us. But wait\u2026 Is that always so? Norwegian\u00a0komikere\u00a0(comedians) Fridtjof Stens\u00e6th Josefsen and Jakob Sch\u00f8yen Andersen, of the TV2 programme\u00a0Kollektivet\u00a0(The&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/as-easy-as-aeoeaa\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14,33041,4904,2153,251387,151676,146,3446,251388],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-language","tag-a","tag-ae","tag-danish","tag-fun","tag-kollektivet","tag-o","tag-spelling","tag-swedish","tag-tv2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1467"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1478,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions\/1478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}