Nynorsk Reform / Dialect use among adult immigrants

[Åge Kruger]

My girlfriend has a subscription to Språknytt, the quarterly publication from the Norwegian Language Council. Two articles caught my eye in this quarter's edition, and I thought I would draw your attention to them.

The first is more details of the new standard for Nynorsk. Generally, a lot of the more Bokmål-near ways of writing certain words have been removed, so now, just can now only be written no, berre, and not nå, bare (which are the same as the Bokmål forms of the words). This hasn't resulted in only one way to write each word, though, so there are still two ways to write mogeleg, mogleg - possible (previously there were more than half a dozen). The feminine suffixed article -i is no longer allowed, so those who say /butSi/ (the book) must now write boka. Forming feminine plurals has been made easier, forming verbs in the preterite form has been made more confusing, and the weak forms of strong words weren't being used by anyone, so they were removed.

There are two quite interesting decisions they've made; one concerning certain nouns and the other concerning pronouns. Nouns ending in -skap can now be either neuter or masculine. Before, these words were usually masculine, but now they're shifting over to being neuter.

The Council has decided to introduce a new pronoun (or rather a new form): dokker. Dokker can be used as both a subject- and object-pronoun for the 2nd person plural. They've not included any of the other, similar dialect-forms, but the nature of the form as both subject and object is supposed to make up for it (a lot of Norwegian dialects don't distinguish between subject/object pronouns for many numbers and persons, but especially in the plural).


The other article is about why some people who come to Norway as adults speak in a dialect-near form of Norwegian, while others don't and how Norwegian relate to such immigrants, and general opinions of them. I don't particularly want to translate the article, since it's pretty long (but I'm sure you can get the gist of it if you run it through google translate). I really just wanted to post it (as well as making people aware) to find out if there are any comparable studies for other languages that anyone might know of?

[Skomakar'n]

This must have been going on for a little while already, right? I've been using Nynorskordboka from time to time for several years, and a few months ago, all of a sudden, it had a brand new design, and some forms were indeed taken away.

EDIT:

[…] endingane -or, -one går ut.

Nooo!

Dei noverande sideformene hennes og noe(n) går ut.

Yay!

EDIT 2:
Second article was boring. Not enough examples. Didn't finish it.

[Bristel]

<boka> for [botSi]?

Is that a widespread pronunciation?

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

If the English translation offered by GT is any good, I can't say I disagree with the article.

I just take my friend Aszev, who consciously uses QcFr whenever he speaks French. Conversation with him are ten times more involving than with someone who learned HexFr, to me.

I don't know if there are any other studies, but I might try one in Japan when I'll go there, taking 100 people with a questionnaire and ask them a few questions about how I speak.

[Mr. Z]

<boka> for [botSi]?

Is that a widespread pronunciation?

I don't know much about dialectal Norwegian, but since he's mentioned the suffix -i I assume the form they use in speech should be transcibed as "boki", which would then be pronounced [botSi], as opposed to the new standard Nynorsk form, "boka", which utilizes another suffix.

[Magb]

<boka> for [botSi]?

Is that a widespread pronunciation?

That should actually be [bu:tSI] I think. "Bokji" (or just "boki") would probably be a more appropriate spelling for the pronunciation in question. It's a pretty marginal pronunciation found in a few dialects, although similar ones like [bu:CI] also exist.

[Magb]

By the way, the best Norwegian pronunciation of "the book" is [ˈboʊçæɪ]. Props to the first to identify the dialect.

[Skomakar'n]

By the way, the best Norwegian pronunciation of "the book" is [ˈboʊçæɪ]. Props to the first to identify the dialect.

It's not Jærsk. I don't think it's Bergensk. Can't come up with any other (slightly) potential dialects.

[Magb]

Doesn't look like anyone's gonna get it. The dialect in question is Setesdalsk. It's probably the only present day Norwegian dialect that might deserve minority language status, since the "true" dialect, which is still spoken by a few people, has limited mutual intelligibility with most other Norwegian dialects. It'll probably be gone within a few generations though, so we'll have to enjoy it while we can.

Actually, if there would be any interest, I've been thinking about doing a little writeup about Setesdalsk. There doesn't seem to be any material about it in English anywhere that I've found. I'm not an expert, but I've got some decent knowledge about the dialect.

[Skomakar'n]

Doesn't look like anyone's gonna get it. The dialect in question is Setesdalsk. It's probably the only present day Norwegian dialect that might deserve minority language status, since the "true" dialect, which is still spoken by a few people, has limited mutual intelligibility with most other Norwegian dialects. It'll probably be gone within a few generations though, so we'll have to enjoy it while we can.

Actually, if there would be any interest, I've been thinking about doing a little writeup about Setesdalsk. There doesn't seem to be any material about it in English anywhere that I've found. I'm not an expert, but I've got some decent knowledge about the dialect.

I'd be, and even if nobody would, you should still do it out of your own interest (and surely somebody else would be interested at some time in the future in either case).

[Acid Badger]

Doesn't look like anyone's gonna get it. The dialect in question is Setesdalsk. It's probably the only present day Norwegian dialect that might deserve minority language status, since the "true" dialect, which is still spoken by a few people, has limited mutual intelligibility with most other Norwegian dialects. It'll probably be gone within a few generations though, so we'll have to enjoy it while we can.

Actually, if there would be any interest, I've been thinking about doing a little writeup about Setesdalsk. There doesn't seem to be any material about it in English anywhere that I've found. I'm not an expert, but I've got some decent knowledge about the dialect.

I'd be, and even if nobody would, you should still do it out of your own interest (and surely somebody else would be interested at some time in the future in either case).

I'd be too, if it's written in English.