On Friday, 12 June 2015 at 13:51:55 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Friday, 12 June 2015 at 13:05:36 UTC, Chris wrote:
Do you speak Bokmål or Nynorsk?
Bokmål, but neither Bokmål or Nynorsk are naturally spoken
languages, they are written languages.
Nobody actually speaks Nynorsk (only in poetry, drama and
movies where it is read in a rather literal way), it is a
synthetic language, but it is quite close to some dialects (and
I sometimes flip over when talking to people who are close to
it). Nynorsk came about as part of the national romantic
movement, an attempt to find the "true norwegian language".
Then again Bokmål (which I do speak) is also a "synthetic"
language that came about as "mispronounced" Danish (which was
the formal official language for a long time). Kind of like
Danish spoken letter-by-letter thus getting more clear
consonants than in a natural language. Some decades ago they
decided to create a new united languages that basically was a
new synthetic bastardized language that nobody wanted to speak,
and they gave up on it. In the districts Bokmål is more natural
and "rounded" than here in Oslo though and some dialects sounds
like a natural mix and it wouldn't make much sense to say they
speak Bokmål or Nynorsk. I believe pure Bokmål as a spoken
language was more of an upper class thing and is called Riksmål
(Bokmål that tends towards archaic forms)
The funny thing is that Danish and Bokmål almost reads the
same, but sounds completely different and some words even have
opposite meanings ("grine" means to laugh in Danish, but to cry
in Norwegian). Norwegians sometimes joke that in order to get a
Dane to understand what you are saying you have get really
drunk and mumble, then they will understand you perfectly! Or
maybe it is just factual and based on experience? Alcohol is
cheaper in Denmark…
Very interesting. I wish I could speak all languages on the
planet!
Here's a nice piece about "Language Mavens". They are quite
common in every country, and invariably they don't have a clue
about how languages and the human mind work:
http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~sih01001/english/fall2007/TheLanguageMavens.pdf
Looks very interesting, I have to give that a closer look later.
Yes, it's a nice read. I've had my fair share of language mavens,
they really don't know nothing, oops, anything about natural
languages. They're just opinionated pricks that are full of
themselves.