Norwegian for speakers of Danish
Posted: 2016-06-02, 20:24
Am I the only one to whom it seems impossible, extremely counter-intuitive and not really pleasant to read and write Norwegian, just because it looks exactly the same as Danish, but some random letters are different (there’s k, t, p instead of g, d and b, these double consonants at the end of the word just make it look different and misspelt and the worst of all – my favourite æ is missing!)
I was always thinking that the three languages should be one whole thing and that if I start learning one of them, I should be able to read, write and speak any of them without a problem. But now switching between Danish and Swedish seems very natural, while Norwegian just looks like incorrect Danish and it’s really weird. The other thing that really, really annoys me and makes the language look even more incorrect to me are the non-etymological spellings of foreign words (like byrå, stasjon or sone – what the fuck? Swedish has that too, but to a lesser degree. And Danish is just right.
Does one get over that when one learns more of the language, or should I just stick to Danish whenever I communicate with Norwegians? Well, for the reading part I can’t avoid it, but for the rest I can choose. Will it be okay, if one day I live in Norway, to speak and write Danish to all Norwegians till the end of my life as a British person would do in the United States, for example?
Or can I invent my own sort of Norwegian – like follow some of the rules, but ignore other ones – for example, gradually start writing the Scandinavian words like Norwegians do, but write the foreign ones correctly (bureau, station, zone)? Or should I pick a different standard instead of bokmål – among so many options, is there one that covers my criteria of correctness?
I think the one thing I just won’t be able to get over is the missing æ!
I was always thinking that the three languages should be one whole thing and that if I start learning one of them, I should be able to read, write and speak any of them without a problem. But now switching between Danish and Swedish seems very natural, while Norwegian just looks like incorrect Danish and it’s really weird. The other thing that really, really annoys me and makes the language look even more incorrect to me are the non-etymological spellings of foreign words (like byrå, stasjon or sone – what the fuck? Swedish has that too, but to a lesser degree. And Danish is just right.
Does one get over that when one learns more of the language, or should I just stick to Danish whenever I communicate with Norwegians? Well, for the reading part I can’t avoid it, but for the rest I can choose. Will it be okay, if one day I live in Norway, to speak and write Danish to all Norwegians till the end of my life as a British person would do in the United States, for example?
Or can I invent my own sort of Norwegian – like follow some of the rules, but ignore other ones – for example, gradually start writing the Scandinavian words like Norwegians do, but write the foreign ones correctly (bureau, station, zone)? Or should I pick a different standard instead of bokmål – among so many options, is there one that covers my criteria of correctness?
I think the one thing I just won’t be able to get over is the missing æ!