NorWord i reprise

NorWord re-runs

www.NorwegianLanguage.info

 
 
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TEMA: Identitet (Identity) NUMMER: 1. uke / 7. dag
DAG: Søndag DATO: 9. april
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9. april 1940: Germany attacks Norway in the early morning
hours of April 9th, bringing Norway into
World War II.
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NORWORD SUBSCRIBERS (BEGINNERS): Below are short
descriptions which NorWord subscribers have written about themselves. Feel
free to send them an e-mail and say hello. Use as much Norwegian as you
can in your messages to them.

God dag. Jeg heter Graciela. Jeg bor i en by som heter
Buenos Aires i Argentina.

Graciela
<administ@....ar>
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Hei, Jeg heter Paula. Jeg er fra USA. Jeg bor i
Hollidaysburg i staten Pennsylvania. Jeg liker fugler, og
jeg liker NorWord! Jeg reiste til Norge i 1989. Ha det!

Paula
<pxf3@...edu> (fugler = birds)
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Morn, mitt navn er Larry Wilmott. Jeg bor i Tampa i staten Florida. Jeg
er fra Independence i staten Missouri. Independence er en forstad av byen
Kansas City. Ha det godt!

Larry Wilmott

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God dag, jeg heter Judith. Jeg er 31 år. Jeg er fra Monrø Township i
staten New Jersey. Nå bor jeg i Pittsburgh i
staten Pennsylvania. Jeg studerer telekommunikasjon ved Universitetet i
Pittsburgh. I juni skal jeg begynne i ny
jobb i Molde, Norge. Molde er på Vestlandet, i Møre og Romsdal fylke.
Ha det bra!

Judith
<molka@...edu>
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NORWORD SUBSCRIBERS (INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED)

Jeg heter Joao. Jeg bor i en by som heter Sacramento i
staten California. Moren og faren min er ikke fra Norge, men jeg snakker
litt norsk fordi jeg liker språket. Jeg har
vært i Norge (jeg reiser dit hver sommer) og jeg liker å besøke vennene
mine som bor der. Jeg er professor ved California State Universityi
Sacramento, og jeg underviser i spansk og latin-amerikansk literatur. Jeg
har bodd i Brasil, Isræl, og USA. Det er ikke så mange studenter eller
professorer som snakker norsk her ved universitetet så det
er ikke så lett å øve meg i norsk Kanskje jeg kan øve
meg med noen av dere på NorWord-listen hvis det er noen som vil skrive til meg.

Joao

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God dag alle sammen! Jeg heter Kristina Rasmussen, jeg er
23 år gammel, og jeg kommer fra Durham, North Carolina .
Jeg skriver fra Oslo, Norge hvor jeg nå bor med min norske mann og jobber.
Min farfar er født i Bodø og oppvokst i Bergen, men han flyttet til
Amerika like etter krigen. Jeg
var AFS utvekslingsstudent i Norge skoleåret '87-'88 i
Stokke utenfor Tønsberg (2 timer sør for Oslo, med tog).
Det var da jeg traff min nåværende mann (jeg har beholdt pikenavnet mitt
- Rasmussen). Jeg studerte engelsk ved Universitetet i North Carolina i
Greensboro, og ifjor var
jeg så heldig å ha Fulbright stipend for å studere folkloristikk på
Blindern (Universitetet i Oslo). Jeg
giftet meg i Oslo i mai 1994, og er nå bosatt her. Jeg
jobber på Nycomed Imaging AS (farmasøytisk, Klinisk
Forskning og Utvikling).

Jeg er til å treffes på: <vikar.@.no>

Kristina Rasmussen
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E-MAIL CONNECTIONS: NO LONGER ACTIVE, SORRY

Next week, we want to collect a list of NorWord subscribers
who are interested in exchanging e-mail with one another.
The list will contain a two or three sentence description of subscribers
and their e-mail addresses. This list will be
e-mailed only to the participants in the exchange program.
When they get the list, they can write to the people they
would like to correspond with. The letters will be directly between individuals.

If you are interested in this e-mail exchange program,
please send a message to me. Your message
should include the following.

1) It should state explicitly that you would like to join
this program.

ex.) I would like to participate in the NorWord E-Mail
Connections program

2) In two or three lines, list the following:
Name, Age, Home town, State/Province, Country,
Language Level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced),
Reason for learning Norwegian (traveling to Norway soon,
married to a Norwegian, relatives in Norway, enjoy
learning languages, of Norwegian descent, etc.)
Special Interests/Hobbies

ex.) Nancy Aarsvold; 34; St. Peter;
Minnesota; USA; Advanced; Teach Norwegian; Literature,
music, sports
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NORWEGIAN LANGUAGE HISTORY by Louis Janus

Norwegian is a Germanic language, part of the Indo-European language
family. Germanic languages are usually divided
into three groups: East Germanic (represented by Gothic, a long-dead
language); West Germanic (including
English, German, Dutch, Afrikåns, Yiddish, and Frisian);
and North Germanic. This last group is composed of the Scandinavian
languages: West North Germanic (Norwegian, Icelandic, and Farøse) and East
North Germanic (Swedish
and Danish). This categorization explains historical relationships, but
does not necessarily make the current language situation in Scandinavia
much clearer.

Finnish and Samic are the two Nordic languages not related
at all to Norwegian and the other Germanic languages.

The oldest written forms of a Scandinavian language stem
from about AD 200. These are runic inscriptions found
mostly in Denmark and Norway Written sources (on
parchment, using a modified Latin alphabet) are scarce
until much later, after the arrival of Christianity in the early years of
this millennium. Then the writing of laws, religious documents, histories
and scientific treatises
became more widespread.

Each local region developed its own speech patterns,
based on the inherited North Germanic language, but subtly differentiated
from more distant regions. Norway lost
much of its population (and whatever power was still
remaining after the Vikings) to the Black Death in 1349.
It became a weak partner in the union with Denmark. Over
the next four hundred years, Danish was the main language
for government and culture. However, the common people continued using
their own regional dialect.

In 1814, Denmark lost control of Norway to Sweden. The
seeds of a national romantic movement took root in Norway during the first
half of the 19th century, encouraging pride
in Norwegian folk traditions and language. The young
linguist Ivar Aasen traveled throughout western Norway, collecting samples
of local speech. He then synthesized
a new language, based on a number of features he heard,
and mixed in his knowledge of the Old Norse language. In
the years 1848-53, Aasen published a grammar, dictionary
and specimens of this new language he called "Landsmål"
or the 'national language.'

In 1885 Storting, the parliament, passed a resolution
making Landsmål an official language of Norway, on equal footing as
Rigsmål / Riksmål, the standard written form which was evolving as a more
Norwegianized form of Danish. The two standard written forms still exist
today, called nynorsk (Aasen's Landsmål) and bokmål (Dano-Norwegian).
In everyday speech, Norwegians use their local dialect, which resembles
bokmål for east and north Norwegians and nynorsk for west and central
areas. Both written forms have members who sit on the Norsk språkråd
(Norwegian Language Council),the organ that sets language policy. All
official government documents (including stamps) must be available
in both forms. (It was quite a surprise the first time I
saw "Noreg" on a stamp!) Radio and TV use both forms, but increasingly use
local dialects instead of a standard form.

Each local school district must decide which of the two
forms will be the first language of instruction. The proportion of pupils
having nynorsk as their main written form now stands at slightly less than
20%. All students
must write examinations in the other written form, too.

The language of NorWord is bokmål, which is the form that most foreigners
learn, but then adapt to their local
regional speech if they move to Norway.

Norwegians and Swedes can converse fairly comfortably with each other;
Danes and Norwegians can also, but speaking
more slowly helps. Written Danish still resembles written
bokmål quite a bit, but the sound systems have grown apart. Swedes and
Danes frequently resort to English or another
non-Scandinavian language when they meet. Other
Scandinavians cannot understand Icelandic or Farøse without special training.

Recommended reading on the history and development of Norwegian:

The "Introduction" to Einar Haugen's _Norwegian English Dictionary_, Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Einar Haugen, _The Scandinavian Languages: An Introduction
to Their History_, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976
(now out of print, but may be available in libraries and used book stores.)

Lars Vikor, _The Nordic Languages: Their Status and Interrelations_. Oslo:
Novus Press, 1993.
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SPONSORS:

The Norwegian Teachers Assoc. in North America (NorTANA)
Less Commonly Taught Languages Project, CARLA, U. of Minn.
Louis Janus
Nancy Aarsvold

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*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*
! !
* Nancy Aarsvold *
! Norwegian Instructor !
* Augsburg College *
! Minneapolis, MN 55454 !
* *
!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!

Return to NorWord lesson index.
NorWord was originally written during summer and fall of 1995, by Nancy Aarsvold (currently at St. Olaf College) and Louis Janus, (currently at CARLA, U of Minnesota). The lessons presented above have been edited to use proper æ, ø and å characters on the web.
An updated and improved version with sounds and grammatical explanations is now available on KlikkNorsk published by Skandisk.

Contact Louis Janus with comments. Aarsvold and Janus hold the copyright © 2006.