What’s really hard about Norwegian? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

What’s really hard about Norwegian?
Tags: Norwegian \| Difficulty
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jeff_lindqvist
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Message 9 of 20

03 August 2011 at 12:18am | IP Logged

KimG wrote:

Scandinavian languages are a bit transparent, if the language users want to understand.

Exactly. At work, I meet a lot of people from all over the world (usually lots of tourists who want to check their email), including Denmark. So far I haven't had any major problems understanding Danes. It may be a combination of they adapting their accent and my ears paying extra attention to it. Norwegian isn't difficult at all (so far I haven't met any weird accent).

Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 03 August 2011 at 12:19am
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Kegel
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Message 10 of 20

03 August 2011 at 12:28pm | IP Logged

The hardest part for me was making the transition from written Norwegian to spoken
Norwegian.

I spent an exchange semester in Norway and before that I had already studied Norwegian at
home and had heard Norwegian spoken in class, but it didn't prepare me at all for
understanding spoken Norwegian in Norway. It took me a few weeks to get used to it.

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Iversen
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Message 11 of 20

03 August 2011 at 1:20pm | IP Logged

The main problem about Norwegian is that there are so mange dialects in use, and that there are two ways of writing it (although Bokmål dominates all printed media). Unless you live in the country in a specific place you will end up speaking some illdefined and unstable mixture of dialects.
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j0nas
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Message 12 of 20

04 August 2011 at 7:49am | IP Logged

tractor wrote:

jeg blir å gjøre det…

I think that construction right there is dialectal, mainly found in northern Norway. (?)
It looks pretty strange to my eastern norwegian eyes.
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numerodix
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Message 13 of 20

04 August 2011 at 9:15am | IP Logged

j0nas wrote:

tractor wrote:

jeg blir å gjøre det…

I think that construction right there is dialectal, mainly found in northern Norway. (?)
It looks pretty strange to my eastern norwegian eyes.

I concur.
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Haldor
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Message 14 of 20

04 August 2011 at 9:00pm | IP Logged

tractor wrote:

Norwegians also mix up sin and hans/hennes sometimes. I noticed it myself earlier today; I said
something, and immediately realised that I should have used sin and not hennes.

As a native speaker I've noticed that foreigners often struggle with verb inversion (the "verb second rule"). Speakers
of other Germanic languages (except English) don't have problems with this. The vowels, as already mentioned, are
also problematic. The three genders are causing some troubles. Many foreigners seem to struggle with prepositions,
and tend to use på as some sort of "universal preposition" for just about anything. Another giveaway seems to
be how to express future tense: jeg skal gjøre det, jeg vil gjøre det, jeg kommer til å gjøre det, jeg blir å gjøre det…
I'm not sure that they actually use a form that is not grammatically correct (as a native speaker I have never been
taught the rules), but it often sounds wrong or unnatural.

"Jeg vil gjøre det" is either an ancient form of future, or an anglicism, it's sounds confusing, because it actually means that you (or I) want to do it. The others sound natural. As for the "jeg blir å gjøre det", I've never ever heard it. Could it be "Jeg blir og gjør det"? I('ll) stay and do it? It's the only logical cognate that comes to mind..
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Iversen
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Message 15 of 20

04 August 2011 at 10:17pm | IP Logged

Nope, it is a language form that also could be found in Old Norse.
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tractor
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Message 16 of 20

04 August 2011 at 11:03pm | IP Logged

j0nas wrote:

tractor wrote:

jeg blir å gjøre det…

I think that construction right there is dialectal, mainly found in northern Norway. (?)

You're probably right about that.

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