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Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

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Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#41

Post by Tor3 »

vidarh wrote: post #5
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.

You can with some luck ask ChatGPT to translate between them, and also even between Norwegian spoken dialects. It's not perfect, but when I tested it a while back it even did reasonably well at emulating/translating to sociolects like the left wing/radical 1970s urban one mentioned in the article. But the difference in common use has steadily diminished. When I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s many of the most conserva…

Nitpicking I know - but "reverse numerals" weren't a Danishism at all. That's all from Old Norse. Also remember that the vast majority of spoken Norwegian wasn't affected by Danish at all, and that included the "reverse numerals" which have survived all over Norway. As was mentioned in another comment, the switch to non-reversal numbers was something introduced in order to support phone operators, who could then just enter the digits as they are spoken and not wait for the next word. In any case, as it's an original feature of Norwegian (Danish has its own variety of course.. with its own quirks) it's still fairly alive and well among a large patch of Norwegians.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#42

Post by Tor3 »

larsiusprime wrote: post #8
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…

For context, my elderly mother grew up in a coastal village that was inaccessible to the rest of the country except by boat! (A tunnel has long since been dynamited through the mountain and the village is now well connected with the rest of the country) There's an entire coastal dialect that runs up and down parts of the country where those people's dialect is closer to each other's than it is to their neighbors just…

Yep. Living near the sea means access. In three weeks you could go all the way from Bergen to Lofoten by sail. As soon as you set foot on land.. no access. Before roads and tunnels. Even recently.. the book "Three in Norway, by two of them" from 1881 was written by a couple of British guys (they were three, but two wrote the book) going to Jotunheimen for fishing and hunting. They left by ship from Newcastle and arrived in Oslo (today's name) after just two days, but going from Oslo to (at the map, "nearby") Lillehammer took three whole weeks. With support from locals and guides and there was even a road at the time.

My grandfather, who lived at the coast, could meet people up and down the coastline as much as he wished. But there could be people living just a few kilometers away, as the crow flies, who he would never meet.. because there was a mountain in between.

Thus, dialects along the coast have much more in common with each other for much longer distances than inland dialects which can vary greatly even over relatively short distances.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#43

Post by Sesse__ »

bjoli wrote: post #21
The_Colonel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

The standardization of kitchens (to optimize the housewife's day, based on observations) also lead to the hilarious black comedy “Psalmer från köket” (English title “Kitchen stories”) where the premise is that the government tries to repeat the success for single males. Who are considerably less amenable to having a researcher sit high up on a perch to write down their every move :-)

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#44

Post by Tor3 »

furiens wrote: post #29
jhellan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’.

I'm not sure about that particular dialect, if it's case or not, but it's a fact that some dialects do keep the dative (though it's been disappearing somewhat recently). In addition to certain country-wide expressions which have kept old case forms, like "gå mann av huse", and "i live" (being alive), though I've recently seen so-called "journalists" in newspapers being unable to understand it and writing "i livet" instead, which has a totally different meaning.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#45

Post by Sesse__ »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #32
perlgeek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a tiny minority of people who insist on speaking nynorsk exactly as it is written, usually in an archaic style like the 1917 normal. Ironically, these people tend to live in Oslo or surrounding areas, where the dialect is far and wide away from nynorsk. It is e.g. pretty much the only group of people that use the “Noreg” form in actual speech. (Bokmål, and nearly all Norwegian dialects, use “Norge” for the country of Norway, but written nynorsk generally prefers “Noreg”.)

Also, in television and radio, you may hear people trying to speak nynorsk pretty much as it is written, especially if their personal dialect is much closer to bokmål. (So-called “NRK-nynorsk” :-) )

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#46

Post by turbonoobie »

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.

It's important to note that "Bokmål" and "Nynorsk" are only written forms of the language, and depending on where you grow up the dialect of Norwegian you speak will be closer to "Bokmål" or "Nynorsk".

If I remember correctly from Norwegian classes growing up, Bokmål is heavily influenced by written Danish. Nynorsk was based on dialects people spoke outside of the bigger cities. Nynorsk however is more of an amalgamation of dialects, and can not be said to be spoken by anyone. Your estimation is in the neighborhood of native writers of Nynorsk I believe.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#47

Post by Tor3 »

yalok wrote: post #35

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…

I think you meant "parents" not patients - I was a bit confused at first :-)

What happened to you is probably that your friends, for your sake, tried to "speak" Bokmål to you (Bokmål is a written, not normally spoken language), as in practice that's how you have to teach Norwegian to foreigners. You have to come up with something where the writing and the speech actually matches. Where my wife was taught they did it that way - a teacher explained to me that it was their only choice, even if it's awkward. And (as told to me by foreign co-workers who did that program) followed by a shock when they've learned "Norwegian" and find out that the people around them speak totally differently, with different grammar even!

So yes, I also spoke a kind of "bokmål"-rinsed Norwegian to my wife when we were just switching to speaking Norwegian. But now I don't. It was a bit weird (had to remember to change the word order now and then, in addition to vocabulary), but I got used to it. It's also a trap though, if you keep up "sanitizing" the language for too long the other party (the one who's learning Norwegian) will not learn enough real vocabulary and may way too long be unable to understand random old people from the district visiting town. Which is something you need to do if you're working in a shop, say.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#48

Post by vidarh »

Tor3 wrote: post #42
larsiusprime wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, my elderly mother grew up in a coastal village that was inaccessible to the rest of the country except by boat! (A tunnel has long since been dynamited through the mountain and the village is now well connected with the rest of the country) There's an entire coastal dialect that runs up and down parts of the country where those people's dialect is closer to each other's than it is to their neighbors just…

Yep. Living near the sea means access. In three weeks you could go all the way from Bergen to Lofoten by sail. As soon as you set foot on land.. no access. Before roads and tunnels. Even recently.. the book "Three in Norway, by two of them" from 1881 was written by a couple of British guys (they were three, but two wrote the book) going to Jotunheimen for fishing and hunting. They left by ship from Newcastle and arri…

A lot of my genealogy is significantly helped by considering if possible ancestors were in plausible walking vs. boating distance. You then need to prove connections, of course, but quickly ruling candidates out because they'd have lived days of walking through mountains apart even though it "looks close" today has saved a lot of wasted time.

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#49

Post by boxed »

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 wish for a bigger revolution in Swedish. It has been rather painful to experience how hard it is for my children to learn to do simple addition in their heads because the language is broken.

It's easier to add 30 and 40 in your head for children, than it is to add 13 and 2! Because it's "3 ten and 4 ten" vs " and 2". The special word being "thirteen". The language is irregular for numbers up to 29 as 20 has a special word.

We should change 10, 20, 30, 40 to "etti, tvåti, treti, fyrti". It would be so much better!

Re: Norwegian: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk

#50

Post by vidarh »

euroderf wrote: post #26
vidarh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lin…

The train has been there since 1854 - it's along the oldest rail line on Norway.

It'd certainly have been a long trek before then (a day maybe?), but I think a lot of the distinction there is also socioeconomic - the West Oslo dialect is very much associated with the wealthiest part of town and the wealthy suburbs, and where there certainly were expectations around what was long seen as more cultured and educated language.

The line is actually very sharp in Oslo between the Eastern and Western parts of the city, and that initial gap is at least usually seen as socioeconomic , but the gap then gets even larger once you get further East and North.

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