Comments on: The Languages of Norway Explained

By: Tore

Tore — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 21:28:03 +0000

You forgot to tell about the travelers Romani Rakripa. In Norway maybe as few as 100 are able to talk it.

By: Anonym

Anonym — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 14:49:40 +0000

I am a 7-grade-girl who lives in Norway, and we started learning English in the first year of school.
That’s the most common now, but before we learned English later😊

By: Graham Power

Graham Power — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 18:07:27 +0000

In reply to Ann Marie Svendsen Slane. Perhaps you could record their conversations for future generations? I'm sure it would be greatly appreciated and I know I, for one, would love to hear them for sure.

By: Ann Marie Svendsen Slane

Ann Marie Svendsen Slane — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:45:35 +0000

Great post! My folks still speak Old Norsk (90 years young and going strong) – as a young child listening to my family speak their native tongue, I heard songs. The language always sounded like they were singing.

By: Kevin Grant

Kevin Grant — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 17:17:53 +0000

Norwegian and Danish look very similar, so with a little practice and reading you will easily be able to understand written Norwegian. Speaking is another matter! They are pronounced so differently that it can be hard for a foreign speaker of one to understand the other completely (native speakers are more used to hearing the other language spoken and can usually manage to decipher 80-100%).

Swedish and Norwegian, on the other hand, look quite different but sound more similar. Norwegian is a good language to learn, therefore, if you want to gain access to all three mainland Scandinavian languages. It is also an entry point into Icelandic and Faroese, though not without considerable further study. They are closer to Old Norse, the language the Vikings spoke!

By: Ray Saunders

Ray Saunders — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 09:15:21 +0000

In reply to Magnus. Written Danish is almost identical to written Bokmål, with some spelling differences. Pronunciation however could not be more different. Danes speak with a hot potato in their throat :D

By: Magnus

Magnus — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 17:05:37 +0000

How close is Danish to the Norwegian language, i.e., could someone learning Danish, to intermediate level perhaps, converse well in Norwegian?

By: Dietmar Anders

Dietmar Anders — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 16:46:07 +0000

Jeg har lært meg bokmål selv. Lesing og skriving er også veldig bra. Jeg har bare problemer med å snakke, jeg har bare ikke muligheten til å øve. Derfor er jeg så glad for at så mange av mine norske venner snakker tysk.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 10:03:33 +0000

I had 8 very enjoyable years working off-shore in the Norge oil industry where English was the everyday language so it was only during work breaks that I heard Norwegian spoke.
Whenever there were Finnish workers there was always robust joking about their languages and customs.
This was over 17 years ago so only good memories remain and very little of the language. Takk.

By: Shelley Wood

Shelley Wood — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 19:23:01 +0000

What an excellent post! My grandmother and grandfather were both born in Bolga Helgeland, above the Artic Circle on a tiny island. When they immigrated to Minnesota, my grandfather, Jacob Christian Nelson, was so proud to be an American that he forbade his family from speaking Norwegian which I am trying to learn now. I think I grew up listening to the Riksmal dialect? Sounds like I should be learning the Boksmal?