That being said, there are a couple of exceptions. Norwegian uses almost no acute accents or another differentiators to the basic alphabet. Keeping your mouth in that position, say “eeee.” Yes I know that sounds ridiculous, but it gives you a decent approximation! Accents on Norwegian words Shape your mouth as if you are about to say “ooooh”. We've often heard this explained as follows. This arguably differs from English more than any other letter. The first has a longer vowel sound whereas the second is shorter, as follows:Īnother difference to note is the pronunciation of the letter y. Take the two words tak (meaning roof) and takk (meaning thanks). The difference is a subtle, yet important one.Īs with all things language related, the concept is best illustrated with an example. A single consonant gives the vowel a longer sound. More specifically, a double consonant after a vowel means the vowel has a short sound. Read more: Learn Norwegian Through a Story The consonants immediately following the vowel change the pronunciation of the vowel. But there's another important element to vowel pronunciation. I've already covered the pronunciation of the three additional vowels, above. To cover that topic properly would require an entire book! However, we can touch on some important principles. This isn't a language course so we won't go into detail about the pronunciation of every letter. While most words now use å, personal names and historic places often retain ‘aa' simply due to tradition. The Swedish letter å officially replaced aa in Norwegian in 1917. One reason for the differentiation in the spelling of names comes from history. For example, the name Pål is often spelled Paal. Many Norwegians use these terms interchangeably, and in some cases choose the international spelling. They are as follows:įor example, the name of the Ullevål district in Oslo is sometimes spelled Ullevaal. The Ø is pronounced like the ur in “turn.” Finally, the Å is pronounced like the o in “lord.” Writing the extra vowels in Englishīecause the extra letters are rare, there are official alternatives available for users of foreign alphabets and keyboards. The Æ is pronounced like the a in “sad.” This contrasts with the Norwegian a which has a longer sound, more akin to the English ah. Read more: How to Learn Fluent Norwegian in Six Months Rather than brand new letters, just think of them as letters that represent sounds that we already have in English. The key to getting your head around these three new letters is actually quite simple. In upper case they are written Æ Ø and Å. They are five we have in English, along with æ ø and å. The letters c, q, w, x and z are almost never used in Norwegian words. foreign words that are used in everyday language. Of the 26 letters that are the same, some are only used in “loan words”, i.e. Learn Norwegian: Start today with our friends at Norwegian Class 101 and The Mystery of Nils It's more boring than learning words, we know, but it will speed up your overall experience. This is one of the things to get to grips with early in your journey of learning Norwegian.
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