Handwriting (Håndskrift)

The school standard for handwriting is cursive longhand (løkkeskrift) and resembles most European school standards, save for the three vowels at the end of the alphabet. The capitals and joined lower-case letters look like this:

Hints for learning Norwegian (Tips for å lære norsk)

New residents can learn Norwegian in many ways. Here are some useful hints to ease learning.

Take Norwegian language instruction. If you are not involved in an orientation programme or other schooling, find and enrol in a course of instruction as soon as possible after you arrive.

Read the Donald Duck comics, in the weekly magazine (Donald Duck & Co.) and the monthly pocketbooks (Donald Pocket) or other Walt Disney magazines and comic books sold by newsagents (Chapter 31). Language in comic books is simple, colloquial and correct. In reading, you can draw upon your knowledge of the characters from your mother tongue to understand situations and learn words without translation. In Norway, it’s no shame for an adult to be seen reading a comic book, as you may observe by seeing what other passengers read on trams, buses and trains.

If you aim to learn Norwegian via English (because it is your mother tongue or your best second language) and also know some German, you can use it to speed your learning of Norwegian words. In most cases, words that are alike in German and English also are alike in Norwegian. A “locomotive” (English) is “Lokomotiv” (German) and “lokomotiv” (Norwegian); a “flag” (English) is “Flagge” (German) and “flagg” (Norwegian). But in many cases, whenever an English word is completely different from its German counterpart, the Norwegian word is closer to German than to English. A “conductor” (of an orchestra is) is “Dirigent” (German) and “dirigent” (Norwegian); a “college” is “Hochschule” (German) and “høgskole” (Norwegian); a “flower” is “Blume” (German) and “blomst” (Norwegian); “work” is “Arbeit” (German) and “arbeid” (Norwegian).

Listen or watch children’s programmes on the radio and TV. The vocabulary is simple and the actors speak clearly and slowly. Look for the word barne (child) in the TV and radio programme listings in newspapers.

Watch films on TV with sound in your mother tongue and read the subtitles in Norwegian. The subtitles are not always synchronised with the sound, but their texts will enable you to grasp the concept, as you hear what is said.

Join a course dealing with a hobby you enjoy, such as the many offered by the Adult Education Association (Chapter 13). As the other participants most likely will be Norwegians, you will be immersed in the language, in a topic with which you are familiar.

Volunteer for work with a local sports club, rescue service, outdoor association or the like. As you work, you will learn the language in practice.

If you compete in a sport, join its nearest club. On a football ground, for instance, few players in a match will bother to translate for your benefit. So you will learn by doing.

If you like pre-school children, take a job caring for them at a local day-care centre (Chapter 17), which most likely always is in need of part-time or full-time staff. Children use simple language, and they will tell you when you err.

Immerse yourself as completely as possible in the language. If you are single, mix with Norwegians. As you learn the language, avoid native speakers of your own mother tongue, particularly if it is the language of your home and you must practise Norwegian elsewhere.

Interpreters (Tolker)

Interpreters are translators of the spoken word and function principally to extend the linguistic capabilities of persons in the public and private sectors. Most interpreters provide services in connection with interviews and conferences held by central government and local municipal departments and bureaux. Accordingly, the translator examination (tolkeprøven) for certification requires interpretation of monologues and dialogues in health and medicine (helse og medisin), law and legal practice (juss og rettshdnåheving), social services (sosialforvaltning) and employment and other major factors in everyday life (arbeidsliv og sentrale forhold i samfunnsliv). There are no particular educational requirements for taking the examination, but candidates are expected to have completed secondary school and preferably have some university or college education. The interpreter examination is given only by the University of Oslo, Department of Linguistics (Institutt for lingvistiske fag); contact the office for details, UiO, Blindern, 0361 Oslo, Tel: 22854348, Fax: 22856919, www.hf.uio.no/ilf.

For further information on the work of translators, contact the Certified Translators Association (Statsautoriserte Translatørers Forening), Springarstien 17, 4021 Stavanger, Tel: 51542190, Fax: 51541427, www.statsaut-translator.no.

Loanwords (Lånord)

Loanwords are common in most languages. In English, most words of foreign origin appear in one of two ways. They can be adopted directly, such as ski, a word borrowed from Norwegian. Or they can be respelled, as are many proper names: København, the capital of Denmark, is respelled Copenhagen. The same general rules apply in Norwegian. Some English words are used unaltered, as “white spirit”. With a tradition of seafaring, Norwegians retain the proper names of cities and places: New York remains New York, not Ny-York as it might be if respelled. But the names of deceased monarchs are respelled. To find an entry on one of the famed English kings named Henry in a Norwegian encyclopaedia you look not under Henry, but under Henrik, the equivalent Norwegian name.

Scholars place the number of loanwords from English at more than 4,000. The prevalence of loanwords ruffles the Norwegian Language Council, the State guardian of the language. In 1996, the Council proposed that previously unaltered English loanwords be Norwegianised and accordingly compiled a list of phonetic respellings, such as timvørk for teamwork and svetter for sweater. The proposal triggered debate. Understandably, major newspapers were disinterested, as they favoured a freely evolving language, unaffected by governmental control. Some university professors agreed. Whether governmental regulation or media and academic free evolution of the language will prevail remains to be seen. But however it is spelt in years to come, English is in Norwegian just as certainly as the Scandinavian languages are in English; just ask any ombudsman (English word, recently borrowed from Norwegian and Swedish). Moreover, English also has borrowed syntax: the pronouns they, them and their as well as their grammatical usages came from the Scandinavian languages.

Mother tongue education (Morsmålsopplæring)

Primary schools across the country teach in other languages to children who have yet to learn enough Norwegian to follow ordinary classes in schools. Moreover, in upper-secondary schools, foreign-mother tongue pupils may elect their native language as the second or third elective language. These provisions are in accordance with international agreements, including those of the EFTA and the European Social Charter (Chapter 20). For information on mother tongue education near your home, contact the local school department (Skoletaten under the name of the municipality) in the Pink Pages.

Norwegian Language Council (Norsk språkråd)

The Norwegian Language Council is the governmental watchdog for the Norwegian languages. It regulates the use of language in civil service, reviews several hundred school books a year for linguistic content and monitors language use by NRK, the state broadcasting company. It publishes a periodic journal, Språknytt (“Language News”) as well as reports, pamphlets and books on language and related topics. For further information, contact the head office, PO Box 8107 Dep, 0032 Oslo, Tel: 24140450, Fax: 24140351, www.sprakrad.no, sprakrad@sprakrad.no.

Norwegian language instruction (Undervisning i norsk)

You might get along without learning Norwegian, as most Norwegians can speak to you in English. However, if you learn their language, they will speak with you. Without Norwegian, you will remain an outsider; with it, you participate. Learning the language is wise, even if your residence is temporary. There are several ways to go about it:

• If you are a college or university student, you may learn Norwegian as a second language at most academic institutions.
• If you wish to learn before you arrive, you may contact one of the nearly 120 colleges and universities in 28 countries that provide courses of Norwegian language instruction abroad.
• If you are a child or a teenager, you will learn in school. If you are enrolled in one of the many mother tongue education programmes, you will be taught Norwegian as a second language.
• If you are an adult, you may attend courses offered by the Adult Education Association (Chapter 13); see Folkeuniversitetet in the Pink Pages.
• If you are an adult and seek certification of fluency in Norwegian, you may wish to stand the Norwegian language test (Norsk språktest) administered by the University of Bergen and by the Adult Education Association.
• If you are a refugee who has been granted asylum (Chapter 1), you will learn Norwegian in classes as part of your overall orientation.
• If you feel that you can learn on your own and have Internet access, use one of the popular search engines and key in “learning Norwegian” as a query to view the current sites of many companies and organisations offering textbooks, phrase books, tape, CD-ROM courses and the like, which you can use at home.

Many municipalities (kommune) and larger companies cooperate with schools, colleges and language centres to offer Norwegian courses for new residents. Contact the social services (sosialetaten) of your municipality or your employer’s personnel officer for details.

Norwegian language instruction abroad (Norskundervisning i utlandet)

If you do not speak or understand Norwegian, learning the language before you arrive is one of the best preparations for living in Norway. Some 140 colleges and universities in 28 countries offer courses in Norwegian; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs maintains an updated list, with addresses, telecommunications numbers and the names of faculty to contact, on its website at www.odin.dep.no/ud/norsk; select Kultur og academia at the left and then click on Norsk undervisning ved utenlandske universiteter to bring up the list.

Profanity and vulgarity (Banning og vulgarisme)

Many words no longer considered polite come from Old Norwegian (gammelnorsk), which has much in common with Old English. But through the centuries, views of words changed. Some Anglo-Saxon words now considered vulgar in English are acceptable in Norwegian, such as “shit”; the Norwegian equivalent with almost the same pronunciation is skitt, which is proper and means dirt or filth. The most common modern Norwegian swearwords, in everyday usage and graffiti are:

• Dritt, equivalent to “shit” in modern English, an insult or expression of distaste.
• Drittsekk (“shit-bag”), denigrating insult, most often used in exasperation. On 17 August 1993, at a meeting in Grimstad, Norway, Torbjørn Berntsen, the Norwegian Environmental Minister called his British counterpart, John Selwyn-Gummer a drittsekk for his refusal to discuss British acid rain over Norway on the grounds of minke whaling. The incident created a minor international political stir and was featured in cartoons in English newspapers.
• Faen, contraction of fanden, is the most used expletive to express surprise or anger; equivalent to “damn” in English.
• Fanden (“the devil”), combining form in idioms, such as fanden vet (“damned if I know”), det var som fanden (“damn it all”) and male fanden på veggen (“paint a dark picture”). Generally considered more polite than the contraction faen.
• Forbannede or forbanna (“damned”), usually an adjective, as in forbannede idiot (“damned idiot”).
• Helvete (hell), used in same contexts as in English: Dra til Helvete! (“go to hell!”), Hva i Helvete? (“what the hell?”), and in combining forms, as Helvetes... (“hellish...”).
• Jœvel, from jævelen, a synonym for fanden (“the devil”) is used in a variety of combining forms.

Words such as these are improper in everyday language; when used against policemen or government officials performing their duties, profanity is considered a misdemeanour and is subject to fines. Blasphemous expletives are direct: Fader (God) is from the first word of the title of the Christian Lord’s Prayer (Fadervår), and Herregud (God, our Father) is a liturgical word, used in strong expressions of astonishment, equivalent to “Oh, my God!” in English.

Norwegian outdoes English in having two words for flatulence: prump (low-pitched, rumbling fart) and fis (high-pitched, squeaky fart).

As in other languages, there are innumerable profane synonyms for sex organs and sex acts, some onomatopoeic and some just coarse, too coarse for this book. There are innumerable milder derogatory terms for people, including: idiot (idiot), klovn (clown), tufs (pipsqueak), tullekopp (fool, simpleton) and tulling (silly fool). Politics abounds with veiled insults. In January 1998, a progressive party politician in Haugesund called a municipal officer a “Stalinist”. The officer filed an injury suit, only to have the High Court of Western Norway decide that criticism, even if harshly worded, is part of public life.

Pronunciation (Uttale)

The Norwegian Language Council recommends standard pronunciation, but it cannot dictate how people speak. Yet for Bokmål, the majority language, there is a pronunciation comparable to the Received Pronunciation of English in the UK or to the Bühnenaussprache in Germany. The educated dialect of Oslo sets a norm, though every city and region has its own variety. As a new resident from another country, you most likely will be taught in this variety of the language, unless you are a child learning in school and are taught in the local dialect. Spoken Norwegian has three attributes which challenge new speakers:

• 1Vowels (vokaler): the three letters at the end of the alphabet, æ, ø and å, as well as the other vowels as found in English – a, e, i, o and u – often distinguish between words. For instance, love means “promise”; låve means “barn” and løve means “lion”.
• 2Phonemes (fonemer): a phoneme is the smallest segment of speech, which, if changed, would alter the meaning of a spoken word. Together, all the world’s languages use no more than 60 phonemes. Each language has its own set. Some languages have few; Hawaiian has just 11. Other languages have many; English has 48 and Norwegian has 44. English and Norwegian share many phonemes. But each also has phonemes not found in the other. This is why phonemes that are close to each other can hinder learning new sounds. For instance, the kj (as in kjemi, chemistry) and sj (as in sjanse, chance) phonemes in Norwegian are close to, but not the same as, the sh (as in shell) phoneme in English. Consequently, an adult English speaker hearing kjøre for the first time may believe it to be “shore”. The correct pronunciation of kj is like the Ch of Chemie in German, and that of sj is like the sh in “shoe” in English. These rules and those for other Norwegian phonemes are given in overview tables in several books on language.
• 3Inflection (tonelag) is the melody within a word. Known in linguistics as the lexical pitch, it is the alteration of tone that distinguishes a spoken word from an otherwise identical word. Norwegian is one of the few European languages that has it. There are two pitch patterns. Monosyllabic tone (enkelt or enstavelses tonelag) is a stress in whatever tonal pattern is normal for the dialect spoken. It is used for all single-syllable words and for some multi-syllable words. Polysyllabic tone (dobbelt or tostavelses tonelag) is a sequence of high–low–high pitch in speaking words of two or more syllables. For instance, the word årene means “the years” if pronounced with monosyllabic tone and “the oars” if pronounced with polysyllabic tone. However, confusing the two tones need not be serious; nobody will misunderstand “years” in a sentence such as “The oars are in the boat” (Årene er i båten). So context will come to your rescue if you cannot distinguish between monosyllabic and polysyllabic tones.

Scandinavian languages (Nordiske språk)

In everyday and official usage, “Nordic” means all countries having flags of similar designs: Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and “Scandinavia” distinguishes Denmark, Norway and Sweden, as in “Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)”. However, the outside world and many international periodicals do not make that distinction, and often refer to the six countries as “Scandinavia”. The Nordic languages belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages, except for Finnish and Sami (language of the indigenous people of the Arctic north) which are in the Finno-Ugric branch, along with Hungarian. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are sufficiently similar to be mutually intelligible; cabin crews on SAS aircraft work together, even though they speak three different languages. Yet differences exist. For a Norwegian, reading Danish usually is easier than reading Swedish, whilst speaking with a Swede usually is easier than speaking with a Dane. Icelandic is similar to old Norwegian, and is unintelligible to Danish, Norwegian or Swedish speakers. Greenland, which was ruled by Denmark before being given autonomy, has its own language as well as Danish. The Faroe islands speak a language closely related to Danish. Some common words and geographic names in the five majority languages are listed in Table 25.

Translators (Oversettere)

Translators express the texts of written material in another language. Most translation in the country is to and from Norwegian, but a considerable amount of translation is done between other languages without Norwegian being involved, such as from Asian languages to English. There are two titles associated with the art of translation. Any person who translates is an oversetter. A person who has studied translation at the college level and has successfully passed an examination in it is a translatør, and may use the title statsautorisert translatør, literally “certified translator”. If you wish to hire a translator, look under oversettere or statsautorisert translatører in the Yellow Pages. For further information on the profession of translation, contact one or both of the translator associations.

The Norwegian Association of Literary Translators (Norsk Oversetterforening) is concerned with literature (fiction and poetry), and admission to membership is based on an evaluation of two published literary translations. For details, contact the head office, PO Box 579 Sentrum, 0105 Oslo, Tel: 22334556, www.skriften.no/no.

The Norwegian Association of Non-fiction Writers and Translators (Norsk faglitterær forfatter- og oversetterforening) is concerned with translations of non-fiction, and admission to membership is based on an evaluation of at least 100 pages of text. For details, contact the head office, Uranienborgvn 2, 0258 Oslo, Tel: 22121140, Fax: 22121150, www.nffo.no.

Transliteration (Translitterasjon)

The romanised (Latin alphabet) spellings in Norwegian of words originally written in other alphabets follows the general norms of English. For instance, transliteration from Chinese uses the Pinyin (from Chinese; literally “spell-sound”) system adopted internationally in 1979. Transliteration from the Russian in the Cyrillic alphabet is listed here, because Russia is close to and has a common border with Norway and Russian names frequently appear in Norwegian media. The current transliteration norm was adopted in 1996. It differs slightly from the International Standards Organization (ISO9,1996) norm for scientific works and from the British norm, as indicated in Table 26.