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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5265 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 9 of 18 05 January 2012 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
Your Nynorsk sometimes looks like a strange mix of Bokmål (or Danish) and Nynorsk. I wouldn't call it a mock-up though. I'm glad you don't intend to stop. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6041 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 10 of 18 05 January 2012 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Totally off the subject, but I have always wondered what the difference is between Bokmål and Nynorsk? Totally
different dialects or just changes in register? ( should I decide to add Norwegian to my list one of these days :-) ... ) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 18 05 January 2012 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
They are totally different dialects as far as I am concerned. And you should definitely add Norwegian to your list :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 18 05 January 2012 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually Nynorsk and Bokmål aren't dialects insofar you define languages and dialects as something people speak. Both are spelling standards, but Bokmål is closer to Danish orthography, which makes it less interesting for me. Nynorsk is closer to the dialects of the 'Vestland', i.e. the Western part of Norway, and it is also slightly closer to Icelandic, which reflects to old cathegorization as Norwegian as a Westnordic language. And for me this quaint old worldliness is part of its attraction.
Spoken Norwegian is something quite different - or rather: it is a lot of quite different things. No single dialect can claim to be the one that is rendered as either Bokmål or Nynorsk, but the problem is that you have to live somewhere in Norway to learn any single dialect as a consistent system. When I watch Norwegian TV people speak all sorts of dialects (in more or less extreme variants), and there is absolutely no way I can stick to a single dialect - although it is possible roughly to guess whether someone comes from. In Norway I suppose you learn to keep Nynorsk and Bokmål apart in school, and I have read an article in a Norwegian language magazine which stressed that most Norwegians are fuzzy about keeping them apart. But so far I don't have a New Norwegian dictionary which makes it cumbersome to check my supposedly New Norwegian texts for errors. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 13 of 18 05 January 2012 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||
You are absolutely right specifying that Nynorsk and Bokmål are written languages and not spoken dialects. We do not have any problem knowing which dialects belong to which "language" though. I have never heard about any Norwegians being fuzzy about keeping them apart, so there is absolutely no need to learn that at school. You are also right in that there is no geographical area where you can go to learn the "spoken Nynorsk" or the "Spoken bokmål". But that does not mean that these language forms do not exist. In TV they used to speak Nynorsk when I was a kid - though I remember we joked, that this dialect did not exist outside of the TV. Nowadays, they use natural dialects, and not the conlang which Nynorsk is. It is jokingly referred to as "Vestlands-esperanto" since it is not a natural language, but one which was reconstructed by one single man,Ivar Aasen, based on dialect words and forms picked up all over the Western side of Norway. There is also a spoken dialect referred to as "Standard østnorsk" - the Norwegian equivalent to RP, which is being spoken by people with a certain educational level who live in areas with dialects of Bokmål which are just as much sociolects as dialects, insofar as they are used primarily by people without higher education. In my family, we speak that language form, as do most of the people I know. According to Wikipedia, it is stipulated that one million Norwegians use this language form, and it is the "dialect" used by speakers of other dialects when they for some reason chose to change their original one. If I were to make a recommendation for a foreigner, this would most definitely be the dialect I would use, and it is the one used in language learning material. (Except of course for people like Iversen, who are not out to make things easy, but to make them more interesting :-) In my part of the country most people do not use Nynorsk other than for telling jokes, and if you want to see a very rare thing, a Norwegian which is really mad, all you have to do is to listen in on the conversations of pupils who are doing their written exams in Nynorsk. We are a very peace loving people, but the language used, and the temperament involved in those situations would surprise most people. There are few topics that can get Norwegians as serious as language. My mother told me of a family she knew who stopped talking to each other because of differences of opinion over the correct form of the definite form of a noun in a Nynorsk-related dialect, "bygda" or "bygdi". And now I am feeling extremely guilty for derailing the thread. Let's get back to the original topic :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 05 January 2012 at 2:31pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6154 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 14 of 18 05 January 2012 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although I was born in Eastern Europe, grew up in Canada and most of my family now lives all over Europe with the exception of my mother, my passion has always been towards Asia, especially mainland China. Back in high school I got an opportunity to visit China and spent my hard earned money to take lessons before going. I really enjoyed my trip but my very basic command of the language didn't take me very far. I then discovered this forum, learned about self-teaching and made some amazing progress with courses like Pimsleur.
After finishing high school in Montreal I decided to spend a year in an international high school in Berlin because my father lived there. Although my lack of interest coupled with my American environment prevented me from learning as much German as I could have, the idea that one has to learn a region's language before living in it got well planted in my brain. My trips to Russia and Europe only solidified this idea so when I took an opportunity to study in Hong Kong, I put a lot of efforts in learning Cantonese before arriving. After moving to Hong Kong by myself, I was really shocked to see that virtually no expats bothered to learn any form of Chinese, let alone Cantonese. Seeing groups of expats stuck in their communities that never tried to relate with the locals and hearing about all the negative stereotypes associated with them really pushed me to make more friends from Hong Kong and Mainland China. I dabbled with Japanese and a few other south-east Asian languages but in the end I found out that Chinese languages were really what interested me. I set out to learn Shanghainese from Hong Kong and knowing two of its spoken dialects made my trips much more fulfilling than when I knew none. Although I was juggling many dialects I couldn't speak or read any properly so I later took an opportunity to spend half a year in the mainland where I was constantly exposed to the language and where the lack of English forced me to learn more characters. Although most people told me not to bother with dialects since everybody has to learn Mandarin, anyway I still did it out of interest and I found that locals in all parts of China were very happy and genuinly surprised to see somebody putting effort into learning their regional language. Despite my interest, as of today I still have not reached a satisfactory level in the languages I want to learn. Since the beginning, the largest obstacle by far was procrastination. I often studied intensively for short periods of time only to then do nothing for weeks. I often started languages and moved on after a few days. Tones, grammar and different scripts are a lot easier to conquer than the thought of postponing one's studies. Here is where I believe I stand with my languages: Level 5/6 English, French Level 3/4 Mandarin Level 3 Cantonese Level 2 Shanghainese, German Level 1/2 Russian, Wu dialect Level 1 Japanese, Korean My hit list is much longer than this but if I ever want to be fluent in a language I will have to focus on improving my current languages instead of learning a few phrases in others. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5265 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 15 of 18 05 January 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Both Nynorskordboka and Bokmålsordboka are available for free on the net: http://www.nob- ordbok.uio.no/perl/ordbok.cgi?OPP=&begge=& 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5265 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 16 of 18 05 January 2012 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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This Wikipedia article seems to give a relatively balanced description of the Norwegian language conflict and why we
have two written standards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_languag e_struggle 1 person has voted this message useful |
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