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This is the second post聽in a series on the great Norwegian language struggle between 叠辞办尘氓濒 and Nynorsk. Click here to read the background post! This post is written by Bryce, a student of Nynorsk…

Having read my last two articles on how to say please in Norwegian, and how to say thank you in Norwegian too, you may be wondering how someone who can only spell venlegst [vennligst] correctly in square brackets after having spelt the same word incorrectly could possibly have the CAJONES to lecture to YOU about how YOU should use Norwegian. How dare you talk about my cajones like that! 聽It's not spelt wrong; it's Modern Norwegian, also known as听狈测苍辞谤蝉办.

I know what you're thinking: hang on, how does he know what I'm thinking? 聽Was I right? 聽No? 聽Okay, how about: what is this Modern Norwegian? 聽How is it different from 叠辞办尘氓濒, G-d's own language? 聽Why does it even exist? 聽Is this part of some conspiracy to make Norwegian even more difficult to learn?

To answer all these question thoroughly, I need to write several leather-bound volumes conveying detailed knowledge in the fields of language history, sociolinguistics, and comparative grammatics. 聽聽But since I don't have the patience to do that right now, I'm going to just split this infinitive and give you a quick run-down on how to cheat at reading Modern Norwegian by turning it into 叠辞办尘氓濒.

I must warn you that this is probably going to be an extremely dry list of one-way correspondences, so in order to mitigate boredom, I've hidden six clues in the text which explain the location of a treasure (actually, I haven't, but that would be fun, wouldn't it?). 聽The aim here is to have a post which I can point to explaining a bit about Modern Norwegian to help those readers who can't read Modern Norwegian yet (that way, I don't have to keep on writing stoopid 叠辞办尘氓濒 in stoopid brackets stoopid).

I'm going to divide up the differences between Modern Norwegian and 叠辞办尘氓濒 into the following categories: geminates, palatals and breaking, consonant alterations, diphthongs and common vowel alterations, inflections, and finally miscellaneous. 聽Confused? 聽Yeah, well, linguistics is hard bro/sis. 聽I'll try to explain the terms as we go along, and there will be lots of examples, and so many tables your eyes will pop out of your head and onto your keyboard in sheer delight.

Geminates

This is where two consonants of the same kind come together (like the star sign gemini is two twins). 聽叠辞办尘氓濒 uses geminates a lot more than Modern Norwegian (the reasons for this are boring and historical), so if you come across a word you're not sure of, try doubling the middle or final consonants, and you might get something more recognisable.

Palatals and Breaking

Two exciting terms here (I'm sure you can handle it); palatal basically means 鈥渏鈥漵 all over the place, and breaking means pretty much the same thing. 聽The reason I've given them two different names here is very linguistically involved, and I wanted to show off my skills. 聽Impressed? 聽No? 聽Then we'll move on.

Modern Norwegian loves the j-sound loads more than 叠辞办尘氓濒. 聽A lot of Modern Norwegian verbs have a 鈥渏鈥� on the stem, and even some nouns, too. 聽The trick here then, is to remove the 鈥渏鈥� and see if it's any closer to something in 叠辞办尘氓濒.

Both Modern Norwegian and 叠辞办尘氓濒 are guilty of breaking (technically, it's only 叠辞办尘氓濒, but then we'd need to introduce another term, and it's enough already), and to make things more complicated, they both do two different kinds. 聽I'm going to show you the table first, and then once you've gathered all the pieces of your brain together again, I'll talk you through it.

The first two rows show that Modern Norwegian 鈥渏u鈥� and 鈥渏o鈥� sometimes correspond to 叠辞办尘氓濒 鈥測鈥�. 聽What's happened here is that the 鈥渂roken鈥� sounds 鈥渏-u鈥� and 鈥渏-o鈥� correspond to the unbroken 鈥測鈥� (think of broken and unbroken here as interrupted and uninterrupted, like the j-sound is interrupted by a u-sound, and the y-sound is an uninterrupted y-sound). 聽In the next two rows, the Modern Norwegian 鈥渆鈥� has been broken into 鈥渏e鈥�. 聽So the tips for this chart is to turn ju,jo 鈫� y and try adding a 鈥渏鈥� before the 鈥渆鈥� to see if you can get a more 叠辞办尘氓濒-ish word.

Phew! 聽Okay, take a break, go get yourself a cup of tea and relax for a bit (it's what I'm doing). 聽Now, onward, to part two!