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Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

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Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#31

Post by Broken_Hippo »

ksimukka wrote: post #14

As a student of Bokmål (for immigration and integration), Nynorsk is an ongoing mystery to me. I think that I'm still at the A level (A1/A2). My auditory processing disorder adds an extra variable that I'm still learning how to work with as an adult. If anyone (in Norway) knows of someone who has or is interested in APD ( https://www.statped.no/horsel/andre-utfordringer/auditive-pr... ), please reach out to me. Anywa…

Nynorsk isn't so bad once you get used to Bokmål. When I come across it in writing, it just seems like everything is spelled wrong. (am an immigrant as well)

It won't be such a mystery forever - at least not for reading. I struggle with many of the dialects down there (but then again... I'm listening to folks around Trondheim and I know others think that dialect is weird, too)

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#32

Post by NorwegianDude »

perlgeek wrote: post #28
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.

People don't speak nynorsk or bokmål. It's s written language. Some dialects are closer to one written form than the other.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#33

Post by Tor3 »

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…

The "official" way of pronouncing numbers was indeed changed for that reason (NB: That was back when there were still phone central operators and you were supposed to tell them the number) However - the "old" way ("two and forty") is alive and well, very much so by the oldest generation of course, but among much younger people too. Most people alive use both ways - for some stuff it's simply more natural or easier to say "fem-og-tredve" than "tretti-fem".

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#34

Post by vages »

sakjur wrote: post #15
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…

I think the right to left should be left to right in that last sentence? I was briefly confused by that and ended up reading your links (takk!) Danish still use a somewhat complex infix system for reading numbers (five and half fours is 75), and I find that very confusing as a Swede who didn’t grow up with it.

My mistake. Can’t correct it now, because the edit period is over.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#35

Post by yalok »

I learned Bokmål Norwegian through my Norwegian friends, and they spoke and wrote to me in it consistently, while some of their patients would use heavy dialect that I didn’t understand at first and was shocked how different it sounded. Hva for noe - sounded as “Ka fo noka” from her mom, shouting through the house, to inquire on something…

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#36

Post by bigpeopleareold »

ksimukka wrote: post #14

As a student of Bokmål (for immigration and integration), Nynorsk is an ongoing mystery to me. I think that I'm still at the A level (A1/A2). My auditory processing disorder adds an extra variable that I'm still learning how to work with as an adult. If anyone (in Norway) knows of someone who has or is interested in APD ( https://www.statped.no/horsel/andre-utfordringer/auditive-pr... ), please reach out to me. Anywa…

A fun and relevant challenge would be to read some works by Jon Fosse, who was the recent Nobel Prize winner. He writes in Nynorsk. It's just different at a reading level (writing it is different, since there are some different grammar rules with it.)

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#37

Post by bjornevik »

goblin89 wrote: post #13

The status of Norwegian Nynorsk is reminiscent of Yue/Cantonese. In areas where it is native, it’s used in writing more rarely (and very rarely in official writing) compared to Mandarin (a distinct, not mutually intelligible language) or English. Another similarity is that Cantonese, like Nynorsk, is considered higher status where it’s spoken, and like Nynorsk it’s under somewhat of a threat so the communities know t…

> Nynorsk, is considered higher status where it’s spoken

Neither nynorsk or bokmål are spoken languages.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#38

Post by Tor3 »

goblin89 wrote: post #13

The status of Norwegian Nynorsk is reminiscent of Yue/Cantonese. In areas where it is native, it’s used in writing more rarely (and very rarely in official writing) compared to Mandarin (a distinct, not mutually intelligible language) or English. Another similarity is that Cantonese, like Nynorsk, is considered higher status where it’s spoken, and like Nynorsk it’s under somewhat of a threat so the communities know t…

In addition to what vidarh said - it's not comparable to Mandarin vs Cantonese, as those are spoken languages. Nynorsk is one way of writing (and reading) Norwegian, it is not a spoken form (nor is Bokmål). Some dialects are kind of closer if you try to "speak" it (read out loud, from e.g. a book), and some are farther away, most dialects contain elements where some words will fit better in one form and other elements fit better in the other form. But even grammar is often different in spoken Norwegian (and spoken Norwegian is just a huge continuum of dialects, which, if you don't stop, stretch across the borders to Sweden and Denmark too).

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#39

Post by rvense »

larsiusprime wrote: post #3
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.

Most Norwegian you will encounter in such contexts is almost certainly Bokmål; a rule of thumb is that you are pretty unlikely to encounter Nynorsk unless you are actually in Norway itself, or consuming a lot of Norwegian media.

If you thought you understood Norwegian but then suddenly don't, it's Nynorsk.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#40

Post by sundvor »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #31
ksimukka wrote: post #14

As a student of Bokmål (for immigration and integration), Nynorsk is an ongoing mystery to me. I think that I'm still at the A level (A1/A2). My auditory processing disorder adds an extra variable that I'm still learning how to work with as an adult. If anyone (in Norway) knows of someone who has or is interested in APD ( https://www.statped.no/horsel/andre-utfordringer/auditive-pr... ), please reach out to me. Anywa…

Nynorsk isn't so bad once you get used to Bokmål. When I come across it in writing, it just seems like everything is spelled wrong. (am an immigrant as well) It won't be such a mystery forever - at least not for reading. I struggle with many of the dialects down there (but then again... I'm listening to folks around Trondheim and I know others think that dialect is weird, too)

I'm in my 50s now and emigrated, but as a Norwegian child growing up in Oslo/Fredrikstad (both bokmål districts) I absolutely loathed the forced Nynorsk classes in the 80s/early 90s.

It absolutely felt as a political box ticking exercise, and a complete waste of time - I readily observed that people were struggling enough with bokmål as it was.

Never had a single use for it after leaving school.

As for the dialects, 100% agree - they are very very different indeed.

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