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dragonlady7The cousins have gone-- put them on a train yesterday back to my folks in Albany.
It was great to see them. It was great to have them here. Each of them is an interesting person. I stayed up very late one night with Andreas talking about a wide variety of topics, and each of us was so interested in what the other had to say because while the viewpoints and experiences each of us had were quite different from the other's, we had often drawn the same conclusions and believed the same things. So that was cool.
With Aleksander, I sat for a long time discussing linguistic things. He is studying linguistics at the university in Trondheim (I think it's the Norwegian University of Technology and Science, which is an amusing acronym but translated into Norwegian it's like NTNU or something-- much less funny).
I was attempting to begin a translation of Soga om Gunnlaug Ormstunge because Andreas told me I'd really like the poem, but it's in Norwegian. Aleksander was amused by how many of the cognates I had spotted, and how much I remembered from my one two-week visit to Norway at Christmas 1997. I do find that I remember a damn lot-- from stupid phrases they taught me to amuse themselves (Vi har underbuksene dine som gissel!-- "We are holding your underpants hostage!") to random things I picked up from subtitled films (overlede: survivor) to common words people used and I learned (Tussen takk!: Thanks very much!).
He explained the two dialects of Norwegian to me. In a nation of 4.5 million people, there are not one but two official languages. The reason? Norway was a part of Denmark for centuries. In 1814 or so, they were given to Sweden by Denmark, and were adopted by Sweden as a sort of independent annex. So Norway first had its own language and constitution then.
In the 1850s, a linguist became disgusted at the fact that Norwegian, as spoken by those in the cities and those who were concerned with "culture", was simply Danish. He went around the countryside and collected the language spoken by the farmers, which was more traditional. From these collections, he assembled a new language, called New Norwegian (Nynorsk). As Aleksander explained, it's not that anyone really speaks pure Nynorsk. It's not a real, organic language of its own. I did recall this from my last visit-- those I spoke to expressing disdain and disgust for this annoying second dialect that they were required to learn in school.
But this time Aleksander was more tolerant, and explained to me that actually, Nynorsk is quite pleasant when sort of used as a flavoring for the other language, Bokmal ("Book-Language"). Nynorsk contains a lot of very earthy, very colorful language, which is on the one hand irritatingly rustic, but on the other hand is full of very vivid ways of expressing oneself.
Apparently one of his classmates is from a part of Norway that has given her a mixed accent, so that she uses a lot of Nynorsk words in a largely Bokmal style. He confessed that he thought it was just a beautiful way of speaking.
He gets made fun of at school for his accent. He is from Bergen and their manner of speaking is decidedly un-posh. Their language, in contrast with the almost-Swedish-Chef-sounding Nynorsk influence, is very flat, very thoroughly Bokmal. They also use guttural rather than rolled Rs, and it sounds like someone's run a steamroller over their vowels. They also tend to be rather nasal, and to elide syllables. (For example, when reading the sign on "Linens 'N Things", Aleksander pronounced it "Linns".)
It's fascinating to consider how different accents within a language sound, when you yourself can't even properly pronounce "Happy New Year" in that language (to my credit, it contains a number of vowels that do not appear in English, and is probably among the most challenging of phrases in Norwegian for English-speakers: Gødt Nått Ar! is my best guess at its spelling).
But anyway. I need to go start looking for a job. Bleah.
Remember your JPN 151?
Date: 2004-07-21 04:18 pm (UTC)Don't know if it's suitable or not, but I thought of you so I figured I would pass it on.
-A1C NeoP
Re: Remember your JPN 151?
Date: 2004-07-21 05:03 pm (UTC)Re: Remember your JPN 151?
Date: 2004-07-21 11:50 pm (UTC)Re: Remember your JPN 151?
Date: 2004-07-22 12:00 am (UTC)