|
 |
Norwegian | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6900 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 47 19 November 2006 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | ||
|
And I only use (den/det/de) "gamle" - it's common in my area to pronounce an unemphasized -a as -e (we do it all the time for infinitives and adjectives).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fyodor Diglot Newbie Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6688 days ago 27 posts - 33 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Swedish, Mandarin, German | Message 42 of 47 19 November 2006 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
I’m a native Russian speaker and I was in Scandinavia last summer. When I listened to native speakers, my first though was “Why they lisp?” :) But, of course, it’s just my first and wrong impression. Then, few weeks ago, I start to learn Swedish because I’m working with Swedish people and can practice. I was very surprised to find a lot of similar words (may-be it’s the same for Norwegian?): Två – Dva Tre – Tri Svin - Svin’ya Gärna – Garna (Ukranian) etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6857 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 43 of 47 20 November 2006 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
First of all, I was talking mostly about the written language. Nobody would care much about how you speak, there are even dialects where they completely drop the plural conjugations for adjectives. (Dom är inte riktigt klok i Gästrikland.) But to me it will always be "baby-speak" to use the a-ending on adjectives describing masculine objects in written texts. I have absloutely no idea what criterias need to be fulfilled for professional linguists to consider a language having an extra gender. I think the need to quantify grammar is not necessarily a good thing. Then the discussion will always reach the point where someone says "Hungarian is the most difficult european language because it has 22 cases." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6609 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 44 of 47 20 November 2006 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
The topic of your previous post was the number of genders in Swedish. The need to quantify is essential in grammar, which deals with general rules and linguistic categories. Edited by Linguamor on 20 November 2006 at 4:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 45 of 47 21 November 2006 at 5:03am | IP Logged | ||
|
Warning: one more long post ahead:
I won't enter the specific discussion about -a or -e in Swedish, because there are people who know much more about tendencies and distribution of the different possibilities than I do. But as a general rule everything in a language that can be quantified should be quantified, and everything that can't should at least be categorized. In Swedish, Norwegian and Danish there has been a clear tendency to merge the Masculine and the Feminine into one gender, but as the discussion above shows the process has not been complete, there are still traces of the original three genders from Old Norse (plus maybe Eriol's reale). In some dialects or language forms the distinctions are still very much alive and can be seen both in articles, adjectives and pronouns, while there is no distinction at all in others. In such a fuzzy situation there is certainly a need for some quantificative research. Are the distinctions regional/dialectal? Do they concern a limited, fixed number of words? Are they facultative or not, and as a paranoid sequel to this: do those who claim that they observe/don't observe the distinctions really do it even when there isn't a linguist around? In some cases the answers are easy to get. Danish has all but eliminated the distinction between masculine and feminine in nouns and adjectives, even in derivations ("sygeplejerske" (nurse) is a feminine derivation, but the job may be taken by a man), but still use different 3. person pronouns (han, hun, den/det). Okay, then there is only fælleskøn and intetkøn (common gender and 'no gender') for nouns and adjectives, but hankøn, hunkøn, fælleskøn and intetkøn in 3.person personal pronouns. In Swedish is seems that at least some speakers observe a distinction in adjectives that indicate a distinction between masculine and feminine (and the feminine form is for historical reasons the same as the neutrum). The noun and its article may not show this distinction, but because it is the noun that decides the form of the adjective, then it is necessary to operate with three genders even for nouns, at least for some dialects. But there is a loophole: if the distinction is only present in a limited number of fixed expressions then the most practical thing would be to ignore it on the conceptual level, but mention it as an exception which may or may not have a historical basis. For instances the modern Scandinavian languages abound in expressions with traces of the old dative ("et sted" (place), but "til stede"), but you would be hard pressed to find a grammar that accepted dative (or rather locative) as a valid case in for instance Danish. And the reason is that these expressions typically aren't productive (or only productive as jokes). Another example: it is normal to say "en grim mand" in Danish, but "en grimmer mand" (an ugly man) does exist. The -r has been much discussed, but may be a vestige of a masculine form in Old Norse. However you won't find any Danish grammar that accepts a separate masculine form for adjectives in subordinate adjectivals, because it is only a fixed expression used jokingly, and no sane grammarian wants to clutter up his (or her) description with unnecessary categories, - better just mention an aberrant form and get on with more important matters. Edited by Iversen on 21 November 2006 at 5:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6857 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 46 of 47 15 February 2007 at 3:11am | IP Logged | ||
|
I have been reading through the FSI Basic Swedish Course to make some kind of review and that gave me the reason to revive this old discussion.
I tried to research the the use of endings for definite form adjectives. I found a very interesting discussion detailing the usage of -e and -a throughout the 20th century on the net, but I seem to have misplaced the link. Anyway, the main point was that there was a conscious movement towards using the -a-ending, especially in the period 1940-1975. Many people (primarily in northern and eastern Sweden) use -a when speaking and it is more simple was the argument. They wanted to get rid of the last remnant of the old gendersystem, and schoolchildren were more or less taught to use the -a. For the creators of the FSI course, exclusive usage of -a must have been the obvious thing to do. To me, this gives a whole new twist to the prescriptive vs descriptive case some of you have been trying to build. Somehow the -e-ending survived this attack and came back stronger than ever in the eighties. In the 21st century you will have a hard time finding any serious newspapers or literature that use -a. The written language does also influence speech and the -e-form is on the rise everywhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hernanday Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4535 days ago 18 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 47 of 47 17 June 2012 at 12:58am | IP Logged | ||
Lived in Norway but never made any effort to learn it, have played around with it a little bit. I don't think it is a "difficult" language to learn, in fact on the surface it appears to be perhaps the closest major real language for an English speaker to learn easily. The real issue is exposure. I as an English speaker in North america have never encountered a single Norwegian from Norway never mind Norwegian words in everyday speech. Spanish is far harder and more distance from English objectively, but the average north american if put in a room for an hour, could probably come up with close to 100-200 Spanish words, just from what they see off tv. Words like Fiesta, Cinco de Mayo ect. In fact I encounter more fluent Spanish speakers than French in Toronto, which is part of the reason I am picking up Spanish. As for people not speaking correctly, I almost never encounter an English Second Language speaker who doesn't have heavy accents and mutters words to death in English or make wrong pronunciations. This includes Scandinavians, who often think they have perfect English... sigh... Until I started learning French, and the difference between open and closed vowels etcetera, I would not notice all the mistakes made by Norwegian speakers speaking English. Further even in professional settings, they often misspell basic English words. Like you will see the word basic spelled "basik". Its not a big deal. But the average English speaker will encounter plenty of bad ESL speakers. I'd say Chinese and Persians tending to be the worse, and Africans and Scandinavians tending to have the least amount of wrong or subtle mispronunciations. I think even a good ESL Norwegian or Swedish would pass the street test, they'd be able to understand the main points and things like that. But they'd not pass well in demonstrating English at a high level as those subtle mistakes and mispronunciations and misspellings would get noticed. The English language is very complex, and even complete immersion does not guarantee one would be highly proficient in it. And this is the double standard to an extent. You as a Norwegian expect or find faults with a immigrant who speaks poor Norwegian, but you as a group overestimate your English skills because English speakers tend to let poor English slide more than other cultures on the street. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
