2009 May | Norwegian Blog

Posts in May 2009

Camping season

Posted by Kari

May

2009

Camping sesong. It is upon us. Less than half of the year where I reside (in the upper midwest) is suitable for camping in a tent. Of course staying in a cabin is always an option despite the season or the weather, but rustic camping is a whole different ballgame. I, personally, love to camp. It’s such a fun and simple way to enjoy the outdoors. It really doesn’t have to be that much work either. I like to backpack and camp in the mountains (which is about a 20 hour drive from me), but driving 15 minutes to the nearest state park is quite enjoyable also. My boyfriend and I (and our dog) have now been out camping 5 times this season (pretty good considering it wasn’t warm enough until mid-April).

Norwegians love the outdoors. I can definitely vouch for that statistic. Every Norwegian that I have ever spoken to long enough to know a few things about them enjoys being outdoors and camping. I definintely cannot say the same for all the Americans I know. My mom and one of my college roommates, for example. Most Norwegians, regardless of age or sex, love the outdoors. Anyone who has ever been to Norway can understand why it is so easy to love to be outside there. It’s beautiful!

So what is the camping scene like in Norway? For starters, there are over 10,000 cabins throughout the country that are open to the public for reservations. They are rated on a scale of 1-5 based on how nice they are and the amenities they offer (size of the cabin, the extent to which they are furnished, the location they are in, etc). There are also about 400 cabins available to the public that the DNT, the Norwegian Trekking Association maintains. The DNT maintains mountain trails and cabins and believe it or not, the association was founded in 1868 with the idea to build up travel and tourism. That’s pretty impressive! And get this, the president of the association is former Minister of Defence, Kristin Krohn Devold. Of the 400 cabins, 41 are staffed and the rest are self-service sites. Most of the self-service cabins do not have running water and electricity, so they are usually located near a river, so campers have access to water (and water that is a lot cleaner than most of the river and lake waters around me-and I live in the “Land of 10,000 lakes”!) It is good etiquette to leave firewood and a clean place behind you when you leave. Doesn’t that sound awesome? And if you are a member of the DNT (which doesn’t cost much at all) you can stay in any of these cabins essentially for free. You put in an initial deposit via credit card and then get it back after you leave as long as there are no damages. I am now in the process of daydreaming about a camping trip to Norway.

Would you like to know some Norwegian camping vocabulary?

ei hytte is a cabin

et telt is a tent….å ligge i telt or å telte is to camp

en teltstang is a pole, like a tent pole

et bål is a campfire

å grille is to grill

en telttur is a camping trip

en teltleir is a camp

and best of all, my dictionary doesn’t exactly tell me how to say marshmallow. The definition it gives is “en spesiell type godteri” which means ‘a special kind of candy.’ Ha!

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Posted under Leisure, Nature

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How do Norwegians tie the knot?

Posted by Kari

May

2009

Et bryllup. They have et bryllup (a wedding). Today Norwegian weddings look very similar to weddings in the U.S. and other European countries. However, historically, Norwegian weddings were much more ceremonial and traditional.

First of all, all brides and grooms would wear bunads-traditional Norwegian costumes. Men wore white silk shirts, dark wool stockings and knickers that came up to the calf, and a matching vest and dark wool topcoat. Women wore a white silk shirt with either a very intricately woven dark wool dress (with embroidery) or a similar skirt. Then some added financial and meaningful value was added with silver jewelry (both on her body and on the actually dress) and a gold/silver crown, either passed down through the family or loaned from the local church. It was thought that when the bride moved her head, the tinkering noise the crown made would ward off evil spirits. At the reception, the bride was to dance until her crown fell off.

Weddings typically used to last several days. There was of course a church ceremony and then several days of festivities. The first day was the bride’s day, which included a procession to and from the church, followed by a long night of dinner and drinking. Typical food at a Norwegian wedding could include smoked salmon with dill and rye bread, herring, potatoes,vodka, and akevitt. There was and usually still is always a kransekake, a layered almond ring cake with frosting. Similar to many Christian weddings, the bride and groom get to keep the top of the cake, while the guests enjoy the rest. The second day was much less formal with family and friends together eating a porridge dinner. There were many toasts (skål’s) and gifts given this day by the guests. The third day meant to bid the couple farewell on their journey of marriage.

On the morning after all the festivities, it was common for the groom to give the bride a morgengave (literally morning gift), which was supposed to be valuable enough that the bride could sell it to support herself for many years if something happened to the groom.

Today, Norwegian weddings share some similarities with Norwegian weddings of the past, but they look much more similar to typical American weddings. The groom usually wears a black tux and the bride a white gown. There are many couples who choose not to be married in a church. It’s quite common for a couple to have their own children in the wedding. There are simply many more types of families today and Norway being the extremely liberal country that it is, one will find that it is more and more common for couples to not even get married, but live together and have children. I will write more about this trend in a later post, but I wanted to give you all an idea of what Norwegian weddings were like historically and how they have changed over the years.�

Oh I did forget one thing. The fele -the fiddle is still an important part of Norwegian weddings today, as it always was in the past. In fact, my dad and my stepmother got married a few years ago and they had a very talented and well known fiddle player play at the wedding!

Posted under Culture, Traditions

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False friends

Posted by Kari

May

2009

As in other languages, one can find in Norwegian words that appear or sound similar to words in English, but differ in meaning. These are called false friends. I always thought these were called false cognates, but I was mistaken. False cognates are pairs of words in different languages that have similar meaning, but lack a common linguistic root.

False cognates are especially tricky for beginners of a language because your brain wants the words that look familiar to you to mean what you familiarize them with. If I see a word in Portuguese, of which I know only several words that looks similar to a word in English, I assume that the word means the same as the English word, unless I am specifically told differently. You can usually tell from the context, of course, if the words truly mean the same thing, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish. For instance, there is a word in Norwegian that is a perfect example of such confusion: appelsin. It is a fruit. What kind of fruit would you guess it is? An apple, right? Because it basically has the word apple in it. Can you see why it would be difficult to know that appelsin means something other than apple even if you know the context is about fruit? The word appelsin actually means ‘orange;’ ‘apple’ is eple, which is more similar in pronunciation than in appearance. ‘Eple’ is pronounced epp-luh and appelsin is pronounced ah-pell-seen. It’s en appelsin and et eple.

The following is a brief list of other words to watch out for-they don’t mean what you probably expect them to mean!

full means drunk, not full (full is mett)

gravid means pregnant (nothing to do with graves…)

et bord means a table (not a board or bored)

en gris means a pig (not grease even though that’s how it is pronounced)

mugg means mildew/mold (not a mug)

en grad means a degree (not grade or an abbreviation for a graduate)

en perm means a notebook (not perm, as in a curly hair permanent)

Can you think of other words in Norwegian that you thought meant the same as the English word that it looks like?

Posted under Language

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Cognates

Posted by Kari

May

2009

This post is a long time coming. As you have likely noticed by now if you’ve had any experience with Norwegian, there are many cognates between the Norwegian and the English languages. Several reasons account for this, such as the fact that Norwegian is a Germanic language and Norweigan grammar is probably the simplest grammar one can find in European languages.

When I began to think about just how many cognates there are, my mind happened to focus on the natural world. I was on a bike ride in the country, riding alongside fields and trees, so I suppose that makes sense. There are typically a few different ways beginning Norwegian learners can identify cogantes: either the words look similar, sound similar, the context gives a clue, or any combination thereof. For many cognates, just one letter is different. Maybe it is the first, the last, or one in the middle. As Norwegian has several foreign characters that do not exist in the English language, sometimes this makes it less obvious that a word is a cognate. Keep in mind that æ, ø, and å are all vowels. The letter ‘y’ in Norwegian is also considered to be a vowel, so remember that too. Knowing these things makes it easier to identify cognates. So let’s look at some…

tre…..tree (a letter difference). Tre is pronounced “tray” more or less, with the flipped ‘r’

busk…bush (a letter difference). Busk is pronounced kind of like “boosk” but to get the ‘u’ sound, you have to make your mouth into a circle shape and say ‘u’

gress…grass (one letter difference). Gress is pronounced “gress” just like it appears, but flip that ‘r’

hund…dog (think hound) is pronounced like it looks, but keep that ‘u’ trick in mind.

katt…cat (ok, a couple letters off) is pronounced like the English word “cot” but make sure the vowel is really short

mus…mouse (couple letters off) is pronounced as it looks, keep the ‘u’ trick in mind and it’s a long ‘u’

regn…rain (looks similar and sounds even more similar) is pronounced like the “Rhine” river

snø…snow (couple letter different) pronounced “snuh”

vinter…winter (one letter difference) pronounced exactly as in looks, with a flipped ‘r’

sommer…summer (one letter difference) pronounced sew-m (as in to sew a button on) mer with a flipped ‘r’

Were any of the above words difficult to identify?

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Posted under Language, Pronunciation, Vocabulary

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Grønne ting

Posted by Kari

May

2009

Green things. I think it is time to focus on adjectives. Today I will focus on the adjective -green- grønn. La oss snakke om grønne ting- let’s talk about green things.

Gress er grønt (grass is green). Notice that I removed one ‘n’ and replaced it with a ‘t’ because gress is a neuter noun and thus when described, the adjective receives a ‘t.’ Since the word ends in a double consonant, we remove one of the consonants and add the ‘t.’ It’s kind of confusing. Mange barn liker å plukke gress når de sitter og hører på trener. Many kids like to pluck grass when they sit and listen to the coach. I remember when I played soccer and we would have a half-time talk, all the kids would be sitting there and pulling grass out.

Epler er også grønne. Apples are also green. Since we are talking about several apples, the adjective gets an ‘e’ at the end. Lene brukte de grønne eplene fra treet i hagen. Lene used the green apples from the tree in the yard. We are still talking about several apples, so the adjective again gets an ‘e’ at the end, but also take note of the noun, eplene, the apples. Nine times out of 10, a noun in the definite plural form ends in ‘ene.’�

Min ryggsekk er grønn. My backpack is green. Jeg har en grønn ryggsekk. I have a green backpack. Jeg hadde to grønne ryggsekker da jeg var ung. I had two green backpacks when I was young. Jeg tok de grønne ryggsekkene med på ferie. I took the green backpacks with on vacation. Again, ‘green’ gets an ‘e’ when the noun is plural and ‘backpacks’ gets an ‘ene‘ when it is definite plural. You might have noticed by now that whether an adjective describes a noun in the indefinite plural form or the definite plural form, the adjective looks the same. Add that ‘e,’ in the majority of cases that is…in a later post I will focus just on irregular adjectives.

Posted under Grammar, Language

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