Norwegian Dialects

[di_glossia]

I'm learning Norwegian, both nynorsk and bokmål, and would really like some suggestions for reference books on the history of the dialects as well as online dictionaries. I have three Norwegian friends, one of whom speaks nynorsk, but they mostly use Google Translate and TriTrans. Does anyone have a more comprehensive online dictionary for

Comments

[nokomedandrea]

try ordnett.no. the website is a bit confusing at first, but the dictionaries are good. log in with the username oslo2 and password 2oslo, most students in oslo get access to that user, so I don't think there's anything wrong in giving out the password (or at least I hope so).

there aren't many rules for spelling differences. some words are exactly the same, others are similar but spelled differently, others again are completely different. the only rule for spelling differences that I can think of is that in nynorsk you can't have the letter combination h+v, so most words that start with h+v in bokmål start with k+v in nynorsk, but I'm not sure if it's completely consistent (I can't think of an examples right now, but I have a feeling there are some words that start with h+v in bokmål that simply start with a v in nynorsk). there are general rules for grammatical differences, though. nynorsk is a bit more complicated, but also way more consistent.

most bokmål users don't have anything against nynorsk users, but we all learn both languages at school, and there are a lot of people who feel this is unnecessary.

as for how it sounds, no one reall speaks nynorsk. no one officially speaks bokmål, either, but poeple from oslo and the area around oslo can often write exactly as they speak, and the result is correct bokmål. some dialects more ressemble nynorsk, but they can sound quite different, even if they look similar if you transcribe them. norwegian sounds very different depending on what part of the country you're in, and as no one actually speaks nynorsk it's impossible to set a standard for how it should sound.

I don't know german, but I'd guess norwegian grammar ressembles english more, since german is a case language.

I'm pretty sure we don't have a word for ebonics.

[di_glossia]

Thanks!

Grammar-wise, I'm mostly interested in Norwegian comma usage and dependent clauses. Word order can change in a way it can't in English (I dag gikk jeg), but typically does in German.