Similar to the Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic language, Norwegian hails from the German language derived from Old Norse. The Scandinavian language is popular worldwide with millions of speakers spreading across continents. In this article, let’s discover 5 interesting facts about the Norwegian language.
It is Scandinavian in origin
Norwegian (Norsk) is sourced from North Germany and is spoken by approximately five million people mainly restricted to the Kingdom of Norway. Norwegian configures a dialect continuum that is close to other languages like Swedish and Danish, which means that different dialects of these languages are mutually understandable to a little extent.
Owing to the similarity between Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, there is plenty of spontaneity between the languages. If someone is able to comprehend approximately 88% of Swedish words spoken, and 73% of words spoken in Danish then chances are very high to know the Norwegian language. On the other hand, Swedes understand 48% of Norwegian and the Danes about 69%.
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There are two distinct standards of writing the Norwegian language
More accurately, there are two ways for writing Norwegian (and normative spoken language, as used in broadcasting): one called “bokmål” (book language) and “Nynorsk” (new Norwegian). Bokmål is the new version of the writing standard hailing from Danish and that was utilized after the first major language change in 1907. Nynorsk was invented by linguist Ivar Aasen in the 1850s, by utilizing different Norwegian dialects, with more than a nod to the pre-Danish, Norse past.
The Norwegian vocabulary comprises long words
Due to noun-noun compounding, the words in the Norwegian language often results in the creation of very long words. One such example is menneskerettighetsorganisasjoner which comprises 32 words and means ‘ human rights organizations” However, the word cannot be found in the dictionary. It is considered to be one of the longest words in the world coming behind other words like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis and hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
The language is made unique by the natives themselves
There is no doubt about the fact that the locals love their language and they are fond of talking about it. The country hosts a radio program called Språkteigen for a very long time and it deals with linguistic facts and issues and answers questions from listeners. Apart from this TV show, there have been many television series that revolve around making light fun and entertainment out of the language.
Apart from television, print and social media sites also make fun use of language in plenty of ways. There are also several programs and shows on social media sites and articles published in print media such as newspapers that discuss various aspects of the language.
Reading Norwegian is similar to reading English
Reading Norwegian words is identical to reading English. Words like a bank, over and problem, glass, while some are close enough to guess, data, like Velkommen (welcome), finger, av (of) and skrive (write) are identical in Norwegian and English dictionaries. For knowing more about these identical words, go for a Norwegian Language Course in Kolkata. Students will get in-depth classes on grammar and vocabulary and come to know about many interesting facts and the history of the language.
There are plenty of words that are loaned
There are many words in English that are borrowed from the Norwegian language. Some of them are: berserk, fjord, brisling, lemming and slalom.
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Laxmon Gope is an entrepreneur with a strong interest in (almost) all things in Norwegian. He writes articles on the language as a freelancer. He also takes interest in the Swedish and Danish languages.