The Norwegian language

Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic language family and shares strong similarities with Danish and Swedish. They all developed from Old Norse, the language spoken by the Vikings which remains close to that spoken by Icelanders and Faeroese today.

In theory, Norwegians should be able to understand and be understood by speakers of Danish and Norwegian if they speak carefully and use standard terms. In practice, nowadays many Scandinavians speak to each other in English, so high is their level of fluency.

Finnish is not part of the same language group and is not mutually intelligible with any of the Scandinavian languages.

Dialects

As Norway is such a large (and particularly long) country and communities are cut off from each other by geographical barriers like fjords and mountains, it is not surprising that distinct dialects have grown up which can be quite different from each other. Common words have many different versions: “I” can be jeg, eg, je, e, jæ, æ; “not” can be ikke, ikkje, ittj, ikkj, and so on. Most Norwegian dialects have three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, whereas others have just two: common and neuter.

There is no hierarchy of dialects in Norway as there is in the UK. (Can you imagine a Radio4 newsreader with a strong accent from the Black Country or Cornwall?) It is perfectly normal for broadcasters to use their home dialect, even of it was markedly different from the Oslo standard. Putting on a BBC version of Norwegian would be considered fake and insulting.

Historically Norwegians from different parts of the country may have had to moderate their speech a little in order to understand each other, in a process linguists call ‘accommodation’. This is less and less common nowadays as TV and radio and better travel connections between previously isolated communities have ironed out the differences between dialects.

Written forms

Another unusual feature of Norwegian is that there are two written forms of the language, and the choice has sometimes created genuine political division – though far short of outright conflict. In the 400 years that Norway was ruled by Denmark, Danish became the official language and the written form of Norwegian was lost as the spoken language evolved throughout the country. With the rise of national identity in the 19th century, efforts were made to recreate a written form of the language that could accurately represent he diverse dialects. One approach was to adapt written Danish to reflect spoken Norwegian, which ultimately led to bokmål. Young linguist Ivar Aasen took a harder route. He travelled around the country, listening to the different dialects and creating a written standard from scratch. This became what is now known as nynorsk. Both written forms have lots of options which allow them to reflect the different dialects. Most people learn and use bokmål but nynorsk is used extensively in the press and on TV. In practice, it takes no more than a few hours study to learn the patterns of the other form. There was once a goal to merge the two forms, but this is no longer the case and the two forms continue to exist side by side.

Pronunciation

Unlike English, Norwegian is spoken as it is written, but some of the sounds can be challenging for a native English speaker. Vowels tend to be pure, and there can be clusters of consonants that can trip up the learner. One unusual feature shared with Swedish uniquely among mainstream European languages is that Norwegian is tonal – that is to say, the tonefall or tone pattern or melody of a word can alter its meaning. Frustratingly, the tone pattern varies between regions! Getting the tone right is an advanced skill but getting it wrong rarely leads to problems being understood: there are few sentences where bønder (farmers) could be confused with bønner (beans)!

Grammar

Norwegian grammar is very simple, certainly when compared with other languages Britons tend to learn. There are none of the case endings of German (die/das/des/dem etc) or the numerous verb tenses and voices of French (perfect, pluperfect, past historic, future, conditional, etc). (Both used to exist in Old Norse, but fell out of use. Only a few rare traces remain.)

Norwegian verbs are simple: equivalent to I am, you am, he/she am, we am, you am, they am!

Most verbs are regular.

There are just three verb versions – for the infinitive, present and past. The future is expressed as in English using the auxiliary vil or skal – “will” or “shall”. Novels tend to be written in the present tense.

This means it can relatively easy to learn to read Norwegian on signs, online or in TV subtitles.

Learning Norwegian

Whether you are just starting out or a more advanced learner the lack of formal courses within Wales makes the process of learning a new language much harder.

For any aspiring Norwegian language learner in Wales the hardest part can be finding someone to talk to. The Welsh Norwegian Society provides a friendly, warm environment where you can come along and meet fellow Norsk speakers and try out your skills without fear of failure.

Language learning apps such as DuoLingo can be very effective at teaching the sound and vocabulary of Norwegian.

There are a number of on-line resources available from the expensive one-to-one tutors that make use of Skype to the free websites that offer structured lessons.

Below are some of the websites that are free and suitable for beginners upwards.