Norwegian Language Learn

[Anais Wachowski]

I'm taking a short trip to Norway next year and while doing a bit of research I've been thoroughly confused by which language to learn. Wikipedia goes into great depth about 3-4 different languages, but Google Translate just lists Norwegian

If you want to learn a few words, just to be polite, it does not matter which version of Norwegian, just learn the version you can most easily find lessons. The people in Norway are surprised enough by the fact that you do speak any of their language, it does not matter if you pronounce the odd word odd and might have selected a rare version of the grammar for the area.

Added:As you can see in the answer by RWGirl here, most English speakers have difficulties speaking Norwegian when in Norway. But a few words are certainly appreciated. When settling in a country there will be a moment that the people around you do expect you to start speaking the local language.

Unless you plan to read/watch something written in Nynorsk, you should go for Bokml. Most Norwegians have this as their written language, and it's close to what is spoken in the Oslo/Hurum area. Bokml and Nynorsk are not that different though...

Riksml is sort of the old-fashioned version of Bokml (basically the name was changed to Bokml in 1929), as they spoke in the early 20th century - it's still used by some, as an "upperclass" Bokml (The Oslo newspaper Aftenposten used it until 2006, when they changed to Bokml). Landsml is basically what Nynorsk was called before 1929, but of course there's been some changes in Nynorsk since then. During the German occupation (1940-1945), Nasjonal Samling (National Unity; a Norwegian nazi party) tried to unify the two languages into one - called Samnorsk ("Unified"-Norwegian) - with little support and little success.

Bokml (Book-language) - heavily influenced by Danish. Nynorsk (New-Norwegian) - an attempt to revive Gammalnorsk (Old Norwegian), which in turn came from Norse, and which was similar to Icelandic today. Nynorsk was created based on dialect samples from rural and "closed-off" parts of Norway, to get the "genuine" Norwegian. However very few (really none) of these samples came from northern Norway. In the northern parts of Norway, Smi and Kvensk (basically Finnish) are also official languages - but these are not "Norwegian"... just languages used in Norway.

Bokml and Nynorsk are the "standard" for written language, however Norway got lots of dialects in spoken language, and some of them got uncommon words and strange pronunciation. However, Bokml and the "Oslo-dialect" are pretty close.

As a native of Norway, I need to clarify something: Bokml, Riksml and Nynorsk are not spoken dialects. They are written languages. You cannot learn to speak or listen to them, you can only learn to read and write them.

Spoken Norwegian is officially only one language. Practically, though, there are hundreds of dialects to speak it in. Due to geographical features of Norway (mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, fjords, etc.) many communities were separated from each other, and thus developed distinct dialects. The good news is that almost all the dialects are mutually intelligible. With a bit of practice, one can understand any dialect, provided one already knew another.

As for which spoken dialect to learn, I recommend Standard East Norwegian. That is the dialect spoken in Oslo and the surrounding areas. People all over Norway will understand you perfectly if you speak in that dialect. It's the most common dialect heard on the TV, in movies and in other media in Norway*. It's also a good platform from which one can understand all the other dialects used throughout the country. As an extra bonus, if one learns it, one will be almost set to understand Swedish and Danish too. That also goes for written Bokml.

* = Please note that while Standard East Norwegian is the most common one in national media, other regional dialects are also heard quite commonly. This applies to nearly all channels, but NRK is probably the best example of it.

It's not all that difficult to learn to speak the language (Bokml as pointed out in the other answers posted) a bit, but you'll probably not be able to understand the reply you'll get. Norwegians speak by stringing words in a common sentences together, such sentences are pronounced like one large word.

From the languages I have studied I would say that Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn. However, since there are only abt 5 million Norwegians and such a large number of Spanish, French, German speakers, I would not expect Norwegian to be the most popular language.

In the USA, there are a large number of Norwegian-Americans in the upper midwest. There is a desire among some Americans with Norwegian ancestry to learn Norwegian. I suspect most are not using Lingq. If you get serious about trying to contact those people, I would suggest getting in contact with the Vesterheim Museum in Decorah, Iowa ( ) Maybe something could be arranged through them. I think they offer Norwegian language classes at times.

I have recently come back from a vacation in Norway, Sweden, and Dnemark. German as a base language I could understand a lot of words in all of these languages. Norwegian sounds to me the most interesting language to learn when it comes to sound systems. There is a plethora of literature from international authors whose work got translated into Norwegian. The country itself is very beautiful however If I were to live there I would have to ROB A BANK. Very expensive, to say the least. For me back to the German language.

I speak Dutch natively and English fluently, and a bit of German here and there.These three languages have a few words in common every once in a while, which helped while learning them.About two years ago I decided it€™d be fun to learn a third language fluently (not counting German here,because I€™m far from fluent). At the time I was fascinated with Vikings, both the sagas and the television show.I wanted to be able to understand them, so I figured out the language they spoke was old Norse.The closest thing to old Norse is Icelandic, but since the resources to learn Icelandic were very limited,I decided to go for Norwegian. Its grammar is somewhat close to Icelandic and has a few similar sounding words,but also has a lot in common with Swedish and Danish.

After I started to learn Norwegian I found out that there are actually two Norwegian languages:Nynorsk and Bokml. I found out that the two languages sound similar, but are written very differently.Nynorsk is written as it sounds and Bokml is more of an average of all the dialects of Eastern Norway.Anyway, I was learning Bokml, which was further from Icelandic then I would€™ve liked,but it did help me to understand Swedish and Danish a bit better.

Have you tried to learn a new language or do you want to? Are you bi-lingual or maybe even multi-lingual?How do you learn to use these languages? Let me know what your experiences are on Twitter!I'd love to hear from you!

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