American Reacts to Norwegian Dialects Explained

Norwegian dialects are a concept that was first introduced to me a few weeks ago, and I have been wanting to learn about it ever since. In America a dialect can be a way of talking in different regions around the country, but from what I can tell in Norway it is a little more complicated than that. That is exactly why I am excited to react and learn about Norwegian dialects, from my American perspective of course. If you enjoyed the video feel free to leave a comment, like, or subscribe for more!

[benjamintomassennordahl]

I would like to add that NyNorsk (New Norwegian and Bokmål (book Norwegian) are not spoken but rather written languages. Though not necessarily correct the best way to think about it is that Norway has two written languages (both with their own history, and vocabulary but overall quite similar and widely understood) and one spoken language with many dialects.

[martinstensvehagen]

The reason for the number and difference of the dialects is because of the terrain of norway, being very hard to travel (until recently) all mountain and rivers cutting people off from each other

[Nabium]

The reason dialects isn't too common a thing to talk about in America, is because you don't have many of them. You detect where someone is from from their accent, which is the sound of their pronunciation, but a dialect also includes different words and grammar rules.

But the American dialects that do exist are pretty interesting. The most common one is AAVE. African-American Vernacular English. There you'll see that the grammar rules and the meaning of words are slightly different from "normal" English. "Michael did you finish your homework?" - "Mama, I've _been_ done." Not only is the grammar unusual here, but "been" here means he's been done a time(in his subjective view). So the word been here is not used the same way as in Normal English. Quircks like that can occur in different regions, but it's when there's heaps of them that you start to see the contrast of a dialect, and not just regional quircks.

Another example to illustrate to English speaker what a dialect is, is Scottish English. Now Scots can be so different from English it's seen as a different language sometimes, or it can be so similar it's just English with a Scottish accent, but most Scottish people speak English with different Scottish dialects.

I hope this was a way for any native English speakers to relate to what a dialect is, giving you two examples in your own tongue.

[GoddybagLee]

Your accent is very much what I would consider an "official standard American English". I'm Swedish and it took me three years to comprehend what the regular people said in Norway (my fiance is from Norway) and the accents took yet another three more years to comprehend the other accents. But this from someone who have got a language that 80% the same as Norway.

[chaidie]

One of the most interesting things with Norwegian dialects is the melody (tonal variation) they use. Even when listening to Norwegian people speaking English, I can often figure out where in Norway they are from!

[peacefulminimalist]

Everyone in Norway speaks a dialect depending on where you're from/live. Nynorsk and Bokmål are written standards of Norwegian. We can all pretty much understand each other, but there are a lot of words or intonations that are totally different where you may need to ask what they mean, or ask them to repeat it. We just grow up hearing all these different dialects and so it becomes natural to understand them.

[olavtrygvason]

I used to work in The Norwegian coastguard, and every time we got new conscripts on our Ship, i tried to guess where they were from based on how they spoke, i usually got it right within a 50 km radius or so.

[FNIX]

I am a Norwegian, and have lived here all my life (up in northern part of Norway, in Tromsø as she mentioned last ). And even I have trouble understanding all the different dialects in Norway :) Especially the dialects in some narrow fjords in the western part of Norway. As someone else here mentioned the different dialects spring from the areas have been separated for a long time because traveling over high mountains was not so easy in the old days. And thus those places had a long time evolving their language.
I saw some said that an accent refers to how people pronounce words, whereas a dialect is all-encompassing. A dialect includes the pronunciations, grammar and vocabulary that people use within a group.
And the fact that we have two official written language says a lot of how different the language and dialects is around in Norway.

You have made a lot of interesting videos. Keep it up. I am learning a lot of my own country too. And its also interesting to hear what other think about Norway and its people :)

[TTDahl]

My dialect is my identity and my culture, just like you said.

[kristena]

That girl must have been living in Norway for a LONG time. The little Norwegian she spoke was perfect (in her Oslo accent).

[nixxonnor]

I think that the many dialects (accents) developed because it was not easy to travel around in Norway a couple of 100 years back. You communicated only with people in the same pretty local area, and each area developed their own accents over time

[cyberneticbutterfly]

I remember an old Korean man once couldn't understand me cause I said "preke" (speak) instead of "snakke" (speak) and he had only learned the latter version of the word.
He couldn't understand what I meant at all and it was so funny.

[evilmessiah]

Americans are imigrants from all over the world, there wasnt enough time to develope different dialects in the usa, thats something that happenes when parts of a country are mostly isolated for centuries so the language changes over the time from the common language of the country.

[Gunnar]

if i say ''Høtt'', i have to translate it to almoast everyone.
it meens ''what'' or ''hva'' in norwegian(bokmål)
also ''Hørr'' meens ''where'' or ''hva'' for peeps in oslo.

[twinmama]

There are many languages with a lot of dialects, and even English has them (just look at the different dialects all over England alone - there are more variants in the comparable small UK than in the US).
In Germany, we need an artificial (invented by Martin Luther when he translated the bible from Latin into German) standard language called High German (Hochdeutsch) to understand each other. We don't only have a large variety of dialects that are more or less intelligible to speakers of other dialects but also three other German languages: Nether German (Niederdeutsch), Friesisch (Frisian), and Saterländisch (Saterlandish) that didn't take part in the High German sound shift.

[Luredreier]

2:19
Not exactly.
Norwegian *writing* and some (especially urban) dialects are heavily influenced by Danish due to 400 years under Danish rule.
But Norwegian itself actually is closer to Icelandic then Danish or Swedish, although 400 years under Danish rule and then almost a century under the Swedes also left a mark on spoken Norwegian.

[Amincale]

As someone who moved to Kragerø in the south, and learned Norwegian there, only to move north to the centre of Norway, I can confirm that I had to re-learn a lot of what I thought I knew.

[sillynorseman]

I live just an hour away from Oslo, and that is enough for me to have a bit of a dialect compared to Oslo. And i can hear a slight change from village to village here still, especially among the elders. So back in the day, you could pinpoint which village a person was from, even if the villages isn’t that far apart. But it is being washed out more and more these days.

[palmarolavlklingholm]

what you call Accents we call Dialekt. which is translated to English as Dialect. Norway is a place with many geographical boundaries like mountains, fjords and rivers. Therefore many different dialects developed in the many different secluded places. In modern times there is free transport and communication between the different parts of Norway, so the Dialect multitude is slowly diminishing, something that is happening all over the world, thanks to better transport and communication. But still today, Norway has kept many dialects, as it is considered something to be proud of, something to mark where you come from.

[einarbolstad]

I really like the handarm map of Norway that she keeps refering to.