We love Skilpadde

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I check the Norwegian words in the Internet and then apply Swedish grammar. What follows is some strage concoction of Norwish.

^thanks for the nice post, Skilpadde.

Yeah, reading a glue bottle really wouldn't be that uncommon for me.

I'm really glad you spent that time with your dog, you can never get that time back, and you can always read later. You definitely did the right thing.

Yay for you finding an English book that got you hooked enough to get through. At least now you can read English easily. I would have thought your libraries would be full of Norwegian books, but I know the trouble I have finding translations, so I guess it is hard when the books you want to read are not available, especially if you have particular interests.

You and Krabo both have excellent English. I only see a very occasional mistake from either of you. People often make typos in their native language, or change the way they were going to say a sentence and forget to go back to make it gramatically correct, so it is very easy to mistake either of you for native speakers. I don't think accents matter that much, as long as you are able to say the word well enough that it is recognisable. Most people are just grateful that you have taken the time to learn their language. Except some obnoxious English people who seem to think that everyone should learn their language and they don't need to make any effort at all.

I really enjoyed Harry Potter when it first came out, but I haven't read it since then. I've now got the first couple of books in French, so I'll be starting on those soon. I'm just glad the first one or two are reasonable sized books. Some of the later ones got massive, and I'm not ready for that in French yet!

Nice cushion too.

Thank you for your polite words, Moomingirl.

@Skilpadde. Is it so that the Norwegian language has just one gender, and there is no distinction between den/det as in Swedish?

@ Moomingirl.

When a Finn speaks English, their basic problem is the difficulty in distinguishing between in and on. English expressions seem to follow no pattern. Neither do their counterparts follow any clear pattern in Finnish, either, but this can be very complicated because you have four combinations of choices.

: )

I wish I had been joking when I said that. Who reads glue bottles when they don’t need to? Other than me, I mean.

I know. I’m very glad I prioritized the right thing back then. I haven’t always done so, and some of that still haunts me. At least I know I was there for Viggo.




Sure, the libraries here are full of Norwegian (and some translated) books, some of which are so dreadful looking they make me feel like strapping on protective gear. (I have germ phobia). But a lot of those books are uninteresting to me.
My personal library (which is pretty sizable) is full of a lot of American, some Norwegian or translated books and a few English (British) books. Books are the number one thing I tend to have on my wish lists, so twice a year it’s ‘raining’ books on me lol.
Because there are far more of my faves available in English, I end up reading more English than Norwegian.


Thanks.
I’ve made that mistake lots of times. I change it, but forget to change all of the sentence, so it’s really a mix of two and make me sound ridiculous.

Thanks, I’m kinda embarrassed about how I sound. Occasionally it’s bad enough that it makes it sound like I’m just sounding out the word, not knowing what it means. I hate when that happens. I don’t use words I don’t know the meaning of.
That last part about learning made me think of a joke.

A tourist in Gothenburg approached two policemen to ask for directions. He tried in English, but they didn’t understand. He then tried in German, but they didn’t know German either.
Being knowledgeable in languages, he proceeds to ask them in French, but the Swedes still don’t understand him. The tourist got annoyed and left.
The two police men continued their control.
One of them said thoughtfully: “Maybe one ought to learn a foreign language?”
The other replied: “Nah, look at that tourist; he knew three and it didn’t help him at all.”

When I visited NYC I encountered a clerk in a book store who was the type you describe. Since prices in the US can be with or without taxes (so you can’t be sure of the exact price), I asked him: “These prices, are they with or without taxes?”
He looked me up and down and with nothing less than a sneer he kept claiming he didn’t understand what I was saying. I had to repeat it 2-3 times and felt dumber and dumber and increasingly embarrassed. I really do think he didn’t wish to understand.

Wow, you’ve gotten far if you’re ready to read Harry Potter in French. I wonder if they changed the names there too? They did for the Norwegian edition. It made it harder to watch the movie, since I always opt to have the English soundtrack. The Norwegian sounds embarrassing. I’m not sure why, but most Norwegian dubbing does, so I always avoid it in family movies and cartoons. Thankfully other genres aren’t dubbed here.
I wish all DVDs were subtitled. I have come across too many movies (in Norwegian and English alike) where I just can’t make out what they’re saying.

Wow, that's well done. Here we call Norwish 'svorsk'. Some people change the way they speak when they talk to Swedes and start using Swedish words. I've sometimes done so automatically because I focus on the conversation and forget to use Norwegian words.




No, we have 3 genders; masculine, feminine and neuter. Den is used for m and f, det only for n. Some nouns are optional though.

3 examples:

Ei jente - jenta - jenter - jentene (a girl, the girl, girls, the girls) f

En gutt - gutten -gutter - guttene (a boy etc) m

Et tre - treet - trær -trærne (a tree etc). n

An optional one:

Tida flyr. Tiden flyr. Time flies. The first is feminine, the second masculine.
Skilpadde can also be f and m. I use m myself.

Prepositions can be hard to get in other languages. Sometimes they're used so differently in Norwegian than they are in English.

One thing I never get quite used to is how everything sits in English.
The car sits in the parking lot. The book sits on the shelf. Really? Just how do they do that? Yeah, I know it's not meant literally, but it's said literally in Norwegian. Bilen står på parkeringsplassen. literally: the car stands on the parking lot.
Boka står i hylla. the books stands in the shelf. Boka ligger på bordet. The book lies on the table.

We are taught at primary school that cars and birds never sit.

Neither do turtles

Dear Krabo. As anyone who knows me in real life would tell you, I am not known for being polite, just honest.

Well, me.

Urgh about your germy library books. Ours used to be like that, but they seem to have improved a lot in the last year or two. Now once something gets worn, damaged or grubby it is withdrawn and sold in the library foyer for $1. Now all of the books in the library are in very good condition.

That clerk in the bookstore was horrid to you. I hate people being like that. You were trying to buy something, and making an effort in a foreign language. He should have been much nicer to you. I have found that some people in France can be like that, if you don't get the pronounciation absolutely correct. Even if they know what you are trying to say (like if you are pointing at something, but trying to say it too). You think they would be pleased you are making an effort. That is why I liked the Italians so much. Even when I was making a terrible attempt, they were so pleased I was even trying.

Ha ha, nice joke too!

Harry Potter is not going to be easy. I'm tempted to do a Memrise course like 'Top 3000 French words' first, but I probably already know the top 1500, so maybe I'll just get on with it. I haven't decided yet. It's a lot easier nowadays too, with technology. I can load a French-English dictionary on my Kindle, then I can read a book in French on there, and whenever I come across a word I don't know, I just click on it and it gives me the English translation. It's sooo much faster than having to look words up in a physical dictionary. Anyway, the first couple of books are always the hardest. After that you have a much better feel for the grammar and sentence construction, and you start learning a lot more vocabulary.

Prepositions are the worst. It seems to be entirely random how they are used in different languages. It's one of those things that can really only be learned over time, by getting used to the way things are said. As Skilpadde just proved with her example of cars in carparks but books on shelves, there is not really any logic to it. I still often get them wrong in Italian, and in fact my Italian friend who is fluent in English still gets them wrong sometimes when speaking to me. Perfection is nice, but I figure it doesn't actually get in the way of understanding, so I try not to worry too much about it.

You know enough of Finnish two know just how many prepositions we have in Finnish. One. Before. Everything else is expressed with suffixes.

Well, your version of prepositions are just are hard. It doesn't matter if you put them at the beginning or the end of the word, or what you call them, they are still difficult.

We can have double, triple, quadruple, quintuple ... what ever tuple suffixes. Beat that, please.

Dearest Krabo. I can't beat Finnish and you know it. I graciously concede defeat.

Finnish is geographically close to Swedish and Norwegian. It could have easily been a Germanic language, but instead it decided to be a weird alien language.
Finnish is to the Germanic languages, what Aspies are to NTs.

It simply survived while Germanic and Slavic languages spread around it.

If Finland hadn't become independent in the 19th century, it'd probably be nearing extinction by now, replaced by Swedish, like many formerly widely spoken languages in other countries whose speakers found themselves within the borders of a state with a different dominant language. It'd be associated with terrorists, like Basque, and holding on to it would be generally considered backward, the way to go being to forsake it as a native language, embracing instead the one which enables you to talk to the rest of your country.