{"id":8,"date":"2008-11-08T18:58:48","date_gmt":"2008-11-08T22:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/?p=8"},"modified":"2008-11-08T18:58:48","modified_gmt":"2008-11-08T22:58:48","slug":"barbaric-norwegian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/barbaric-norwegian\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbaric Norwegian"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember my Norwegian professor (the only native professor I had at St. Olaf) telling our class one time that the Norwegian language is barbaric.\u00a0 Think of what it would have sounded like to listen to barbarians talk to each other.\u00a0 “He go to movie theater.”\u00a0 “She\u00a0want to Spain.”\u00a0 In current American English, we would say “He wants to go to the movie theater.”\u00a0 “She wants to travel to Spain.”\u00a0 In Norwegian these phrases would translate to “Han g\u00e5r p\u00e5 kino.”\u00a0 “Hun skal til Spania.”<\/strong>\u00a0 They are a lot shorter and quite frankly, just more simple.\u00a0 They look and sound a bit barbaric, don’t they?<\/p>\n

The simplicity of the language is one of the reasons why I love it so much.\u00a0 Norwegian verbs do not\u00a0require conjugation.\u00a0 For example, “I go, you go, he\/she goes, we go, you (pl.) go, they go” in Norwegian is “jeg g\u00e5r, du g\u00e5r, han\/hun g\u00e5r, vi g\u00e5r, dere g\u00e5r, and de g\u00e5r.”\u00a0<\/strong> The verb stays the same regardless of the subject.\u00a0 When you think about it, why would verbs in the same tense ever need to be conjugated?\u00a0 As far as I’m concerned, there is no purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not only are verbs in the same tense not conjugated, but sometimes you can simply leave a word out and people will completely understand you.\u00a0 In the first paragraph I shared a couple of phrases that seem like they are missing something.\u00a0 In Norwegian when you say you are going to the movies or going skiing or going on a walk you can simply say “jeg g\u00e5r p\u00e5 kino” or “jeg g\u00e5r p\u00e5 ski” or “jeg g\u00e5r p\u00e5 tur.”\u00a0 <\/strong>The key of course is knowing which of these phrases operate this way and which do not.\u00a0 Just thought I’d applaud the language for being so simple sometimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I was writing the above pronouns, I caught myself capitalizing pronouns such as I.\u00a0 In Norwegian, the only time the pronoun “I” (jeg<\/strong>) is capitalized is when it begins a sentence.\u00a0 Days of the week and months of the year follow the same rule-only at the beginning of a sentence are they capitalized.\u00a0 And back to “I” not being capitalized…I think I might have an idea about why this is the case…perhaps the Janteloven<\/strong>.\u00a0 I will write a post on this at a later date.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stay tuned!<\/p>\n

\ufffd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember my Norwegian professor (the only native professor I had at St. Olaf) telling our class one time that the Norwegian language is barbaric.\u00a0 Think of what it would have sounded like to listen to barbarians talk to each other.\u00a0 “He go to movie theater.”\u00a0 “She\u00a0want to Spain.”\u00a0 In current American English, we would…<\/p>\n

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