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An introduction to 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办, the dialect of the Norwegian language spoken in Trondheim and much of central Norway.

Picture the scenario: you spent countless hours learning Norwegian in Oslo. You are quite proud to be able to understand news broadcasts (mostly) and chat to your barista while waiting for your morning coffee.

Then you sit on a northbound train for a few hours and when you get off, every other encounter with a stranger shatters your already shaky confidence in learning Norwegian.

What people are saying vaguely sounds like words, but often it seems like it鈥檚 a succession of vowels being sung to some abstract tune.

Welcome to your first contact with 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办: the dialect(s) of Trondheim and the surrounding areas. It may seem daunting at first – that鈥檚 because it is, largely – but hopefully our little guide will help deconfuse stuff a little bit.

What is a dialect?

A dialect is a regional variety of a language that distinguishes itself by features such as vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar. The line between dialect and language is fuzzy.

Fully-blown languages often start as a regional dialect that gets elevated for geographical and practical reasons.

French is an example of this. In the 17th and 18th century, the Parisian version of French became the 鈥渙fficial鈥� one, with other variations deemed inferior and shameful.

In Norway, regional dialects are anything but shameful. On the contrary, they are often a source of pride, and it is common for people to hold on to their local dialect years after having left the area where it is commonly spoken.

What does 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 sound like?

罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 sounds quite different from the Norwegian spoken in Oslo. So different in fact, that an acute listener that knows nothing of Norwegian can hear the difference.

The difference for this is threefold: tonality, vowels, and something called palatalisation.

Tonality in Norwegian and 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办

To a native English speaker, Norwegian as a whole sounds oddly melodic. Norwegian speakers adopt tonal patterns that sound unusual when you have never heard them before.

People who speak 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 adopt even more peculiar tonal patterns. Since it鈥檚 so difficult to describe, here鈥檚 a video.

There is applause and laughter because this clip was used in a humour show as an example of a dialect that is difficult to understand. But it is a very good example of the strange singing that is used in Norwegian – and even more so in 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办.

Note that Norwegian is not a tonal language (like Mandarin or Vietnamese) but falls in the similar-but-different category of .

Vowels in 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办

Disclaimer: I am about to oversimplify quite a bit. But people speaking 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 sound like they use vowels more.

To a person not familiar with the language and listening to people speaking it, 鈥渟tandard鈥� Norwegian has a good balance between consonants and vowels. It 鈥渇lows鈥�, a bit like Japanese.

罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办, though, sometimes sounds like a succession of vowels. There are several reasons for this.

The first one is that many words used in 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 have fewer consonants than their 脴stlandsk (Oslo) equivalents. The pronoun 鈥渉un鈥�, for example (she), becomes 鈥渉u鈥�. The pronoun 鈥渉enne鈥� (her) becomes simply 鈥渁鈥�. In both cases, consonants disappear.

The second reason is called . This is a linguistics term that means that the last vowel or syllable of a word is left unpronounced.

Paradoxically, dropping the last vowel of a word sometimes makes the whole word sound more 鈥渧owelly鈥�. Take the verb 鈥溍� kj酶pe鈥� for example (uh shuh-puh). In 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办, people will more often than not say 鈥溍� kj酶p鈥� (uh shuuhp).

Because the last vowel is skipped, more length/importance is given to the only one that鈥檚 left.

Palatalisation: how to make your consonants ‘moist'

Palatalisation is a linguistic term that means pushing your tongue against your palate when pronouncing a consonant. When you say 鈥渘鈥�, for example, the tip of your tongue typically touches an area of your palate just above your teeth.

With palatalisation, you press a larger portion of the tongue against the palate. It has the effect of making you sound funny.

Because of this, in 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办, 鈥渉an鈥� (he) becomes 鈥渉a帽鈥� (often spelt hanj). The sound is similar to the 帽 in jalape帽o – assuming the word is pronounced in the proper Spanish way.

罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 vocabulary

In addition to pronunciation and tonality quirks, 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 has its own vocabulary that makes it sound different. This is particularly problematic for foreign speakers, because it means that they will have no knowledge of many of the words commonly used.

You see, more often than not, when a dialect uses a completely different word, it鈥檚 one that鈥檚 used very commonly, such as 鈥淚鈥�, 鈥済irl鈥�, 鈥渉ow鈥� or 鈥渢ired鈥�. This applies not only to 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 but to all Norwegian dialects.

The upside of this is that if you learn the 100 most common words in a given dialect, you鈥檒l have come a long way in reducing the noise and increasing your understanding.

The more complicated words, like 鈥減hilosophy鈥�, 鈥渃ontemporary art鈥� or 鈥渕etaphysics鈥� are likely to be exactly the same regardless of the dialect.

Examples of 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 vocabulary

Here are examples of these common words that become totally different in 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办.

罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办	叠辞办尘氓濒	English
忙	jeg	I
veitj	jente	girl
koss/kossen	hvordan	how
klar	蝉濒颈迟别苍/迟谤酶迟迟	tired
mytji	mye	much/a lot

The pronoun for 鈥淚鈥� is one that can help you pinpoint which dialect people are speaking. In 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 it is usually 鈥溍︹��. Describing with words how to pronounce vowel sounds is notoriously difficult, but 鈥溍︹�� has been described as similar to the sound made by the letter 鈥渁鈥� in 鈥渟ad鈥�.

鈥淰eitj鈥� is another word you may come across that can be very confusing because it鈥檚 so different from the bokm氓l word it replaces. Not all people who view themselves as speaking 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 use it though; some use 鈥渏ente鈥�, but with the 鈥渘鈥� palatalised as described above.

鈥淗ow鈥� is another word that varies a lot from one dialect to the other. In 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办, it becomes 鈥渒oss鈥� or 鈥渒ossen鈥�, more often than not.

鈥淜lar鈥�, confusingly, exists in bokm氓l as well but means something completely different: 鈥渞eady鈥�. When suppressing a jet lag induced yawn at a wedding, I was asked 鈥淓r du klar?鈥�, to which to my 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办-ignorant self answered 鈥淜lar til hva?鈥� (Ready for what?).

Mytji, for which I won鈥檛 even attempt to describe the pronunciation, means 鈥渕uch鈥� or 鈥渁 lot鈥�, and is one of those examples where the boundary between unusual pronunciation and different vocabulary becomes fuzzy.

There is more than one 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办

Before my inbox gets inundated, let me make something clear: the list above is not written in stone. Not all people who view themselves as speaking 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 use the words above.

Some use even more obscure ones, others use the bokm氓l equivalents. Language is fluid and ever-evolving, and the dialect a person speaks really depends on their background: such as where they are from specifically, where they live currently and how old they are.

How to understand 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办

So now that you know a bit more about 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办, here are some tips to understand it better.

Keep an open mind

Some of the words that are different from one dialect to another are quite different – like those we listed above – but others are just pronounced a little differently. If you open up your mind to accept pronunciation differences, you鈥檒l get a lot for free.

The bokm氓l word for floor, 鈥済ulv鈥�, often becomes 鈥済酶lv鈥� in 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办. Some words with 鈥渋鈥� suddenly take an 鈥渆鈥� in 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办. Seeing vowels as largely interchangeable will help you figure out the meaning of words that, when first hearing them, seem completely unknown.

Learn the most common words

There are about a dozen ways to say 鈥渉ow鈥� in Norwegian dialects, and the solution to that as a non-native speaker is, unfortunately, to learn them. If your focus is 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办 exclusively, then knowing both 鈥渉vordan鈥� and 鈥渒oss/kossen鈥� should be sufficient.

Similarly, you鈥檒l need to learn the other very commonly used ones. Here, the book is invaluable.

It provides a very useful introduction to the large Norwegian dialect families, with word lists and details on their pronunciation particularities. It鈥檚 a relatively quick read as well, so I can鈥檛 recommend it enough if you are interested.

Ask questions

Learning a languages goes hand in hand with accepting that you鈥檒l sound stupid from time to time. One part of that means making mistakes, the other means asking people about that word they just used that you didn鈥檛 understand.

No matter how good you are at finding information yourself and learning new words and pronunciation rules, you are guaranteed to come across words that you either forgot or never encountered. Luckily, Norwegians are happy to help, most of the time, and they are usually pleased to see someone showing interest in their native dialect.

Tell us what you think

Do you know someone who speaks 罢谤酶苍诲别谤蝉办? Have you been in the Trondheim or Tr酶ndelag area before? What do you think about dialects? Let us know in the comments!