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Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

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Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#21

Post by bjoli »

The_Colonel wrote: post #16
vages wrote: post #10

Norwegian written and pronounced language was actually changed because one digit was added to phone numbers. Here is the long story: Starting after World War Two, the government made an attempt at _merging_ the two written languages. The imagined outcome was named “Samnorsk” (unified Norwegian), led by Språknemnda (The Language committee). The work mainly consisted of changing the grammar of certain words in the bokm…

> This was architected by the head of the telephone bureau in 1949, as an error reduction mechanism I find it fascinating that the telephone bureau was powerful enough to initiate such language change. Imagine happening this today. But this reminds me of the fact that in Czech we have both counting systems as well. The forward (english) counting is the standard, but the backward (german) is quite commonly used inform…

It was a different time as well. There was one central resource for phone-related things and the spirit of the time was very much a bureaucratic efficient one. The idea was that you could make the society better and more efficient, often top down. In Sweden there was even a standardisation of kitchens made by a government agency. Everything from height of the counters to placement. It wasn't always followed, but it did shape things. This was done at a time when the Swedish population hade a staggering increase in housing standards due mostly to government policy. The houses might not be very highly regarded today (mostly because the areas are considered bad) but they are solidly built and are usually very practical with lots of storage in the right places.

In Sweden we had the "du"-reform where we stopped referring to people either by their title or surname and the plural-you ("ni"). Instead we started using singular you ("du") and first name. This was started at a government agency and spread quickly through society.

There was actually a gender neutral pronoun introduced recently that is getting used more often. In addition to "han" and "hon" (he and she) we now have "hen". Depending on language situation it is actually very handy, and you can actually see it used in large newspapers or semi-official documents.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#22

Post by ithkuil »

The_Colonel wrote: post #16
vages wrote: post #10

Norwegian written and pronounced language was actually changed because one digit was added to phone numbers. Here is the long story: Starting after World War Two, the government made an attempt at _merging_ the two written languages. The imagined outcome was named “Samnorsk” (unified Norwegian), led by Språknemnda (The Language committee). The work mainly consisted of changing the grammar of certain words in the bokm…

> This was architected by the head of the telephone bureau in 1949, as an error reduction mechanism I find it fascinating that the telephone bureau was powerful enough to initiate such language change. Imagine happening this today. But this reminds me of the fact that in Czech we have both counting systems as well. The forward (english) counting is the standard, but the backward (german) is quite commonly used inform…

Some structural similarities can be explained by contact but other similarities are indications of common origin. Indeed both Germanic languages and Slavic languages share a common ancestor: proto-indo-european.

"Present" also shares a similar etymology; from latin: prae (before) + esse (be), with a similar palette of meanings as the Germanic and Slavic forms

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#23

Post by jhellan »

williamcotton wrote: post #6
mistrial9 wrote: post #4

this energetic overview necessarily blurs a lot of distinctions when describing the changes in population and language over time. The Vikings (aka pirates) were a dominant form for a very long time, with care going to ferocity and travel skills, not fancy verb forms or leather bound books. It was literally larger and larger Feudal associations that led to merging into this kingdom or that kingdom, and not everyone wa…

I don't think you understand the extent of the variety of differences in spoken Norwegian. This is geographic in nature as most of the west coast is rock walls of varying height perpendicular to their emergence from the sea. This has led to isolated communities that continue to be isolated in various regards even to this day. Of the very little Norwegian that I speak, I do so in the Vestlandet dialect, meaning I woul…

Wow! You have preserved the dative case. "i kerken" instead of "i kerka". Dative is AFAIK not part of any standard Scandinavian language, but remains in some dialects. Steadily losing ground, though.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#24

Post by euroderf »

The_Colonel wrote: post #16
vages wrote: post #10

Norwegian written and pronounced language was actually changed because one digit was added to phone numbers. Here is the long story: Starting after World War Two, the government made an attempt at _merging_ the two written languages. The imagined outcome was named “Samnorsk” (unified Norwegian), led by Språknemnda (The Language committee). The work mainly consisted of changing the grammar of certain words in the bokm…

> This was architected by the head of the telephone bureau in 1949, as an error reduction mechanism I find it fascinating that the telephone bureau was powerful enough to initiate such language change. Imagine happening this today. But this reminds me of the fact that in Czech we have both counting systems as well. The forward (english) counting is the standard, but the backward (german) is quite commonly used inform…

> I find it fascinating that the telephone bureau was powerful enough to initiate such language change. Imagine happening this today.

You will get a chuckle out of the film The President's Analyst.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#25

Post by avgcorrection »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #2

Google Translate does not seem to differentiate between these, giving only an option for "Norwegian", so I have been a bit perplexed about what to put there. Thanks for this explanatory article.

Gmail will helpfully underline a third of my words as being wrong.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#26

Post by euroderf »

vidarh wrote: post #9
williamcotton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand the extent of the variety of differences in spoken Norwegian. This is geographic in nature as most of the west coast is rock walls of varying height perpendicular to their emergence from the sea. This has led to isolated communities that continue to be isolated in various regards even to this day. Of the very little Norwegian that I speak, I do so in the Vestlandet dialect, meaning I woul…

It's even more complicated. I grew up north east of Oslo, but speak close to western Oslo dialect with some now pretty-conservative Bokmål use (to the point where your rendition of Oslo-dialect is entirely different to how I speak - e.g. I prominently pronounce the "l" in "skal" and my pronunciation of "kirken" has nothing resembling any "sh-" sound), partly due to my dad, partly because I grew up reading a lot of ol…

> Those dialects are a 15 minute train ride apart.

This prompts questions on the linguistic fallout of infrastructural development.

Presumably the train line is more direct and faster than any previous land (or sea) connection. In what year was the train line built ? And, how far apart in travel time were the dialects before then ? And, has there perhaps been an academic study of the effect over time of the train line on the relationship between the dialects ?

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#27

Post by vodkapump »

vages wrote: post #10

Norwegian written and pronounced language was actually changed because one digit was added to phone numbers. Here is the long story: Starting after World War Two, the government made an attempt at _merging_ the two written languages. The imagined outcome was named “Samnorsk” (unified Norwegian), led by Språknemnda (The Language committee). The work mainly consisted of changing the grammar of certain words in the bokm…

> What the government did succeed at was changing the pronunciation of numbers from 20 to 99. It was changed from how the Germans do it (“two and forty”) to how the English do (“forty two”).

Yet almost every single person I speak with every day here outside of people from the Oslo region say it the "two and forty" way.

Though, that probably still means most people say it the "forty two" way.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#28

Post by perlgeek »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #2

Google Translate does not seem to differentiate between these, giving only an option for "Norwegian", so I have been a bit perplexed about what to put there. Thanks for this explanatory article.

My impression was that Google neglected Norway a bit, my wife (who is half-Norwegian) told me that Google results for Norwegian websites were pretty terrible just a few years ago.

Also, Nynorsk really is a minority (spoken by only about half a million people), which makes it harder to create a corpus for automatic translation.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#29

Post by furiens »

jhellan wrote: post #23
williamcotton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand the extent of the variety of differences in spoken Norwegian. This is geographic in nature as most of the west coast is rock walls of varying height perpendicular to their emergence from the sea. This has led to isolated communities that continue to be isolated in various regards even to this day. Of the very little Norwegian that I speak, I do so in the Vestlandet dialect, meaning I woul…

Wow! You have preserved the dative case. "i kerken" instead of "i kerka". Dative is AFAIK not part of any standard Scandinavian language, but remains in some dialects. Steadily losing ground, though.

I don’t think it’s anything to do with case, just that the gender of the word is different between the dialects. ‘en’ or ‘a’ is just a suffix meaning ‘the’.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#30

Post by [deleted] »

vodkapump wrote: post #27
vages wrote: post #10

Norwegian written and pronounced language was actually changed because one digit was added to phone numbers. Here is the long story: Starting after World War Two, the government made an attempt at _merging_ the two written languages. The imagined outcome was named “Samnorsk” (unified Norwegian), led by Språknemnda (The Language committee). The work mainly consisted of changing the grammar of certain words in the bokm…

> What the government did succeed at was changing the pronunciation of numbers from 20 to 99. It was changed from how the Germans do it (“two and forty”) to how the English do (“forty two”). Yet almost every single person I speak with every day here outside of people from the Oslo region say it the "two and forty" way. Though, that probably still means most people say it the "forty two" way.

[deleted]
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