Posts under Pronunciation

the passage of time

Posted by Kari
Jun
3
2009

I think it’s about time I address the concept of time since there are so many words that describe it and stand for it.  You might be wondering what I mean.  I mean days of the week, months in the year, long ago, in the future, tomorrow, etc.  So we’ll be looking at both nouns and adverbs.  Let’s start learning about tid (time)-pronounced “teeeed” with a soft “d”

First, let’s go through the months of the year.  Notice that they are not capitalized (unless of course they begin a sentence, which they rarely ever do).  I will list them in chronological order.

januar pronounced “yahn-you-ahr”

februar pronounced “feb-roo-ahr”

mars pronounced “marsh”

april pronounced “ah-preel”

mai pronounced “my” but the ‘ai’ is a dipthong so you say the ‘a’ first and then the ‘i’ so it sounds a bit different than ‘y’

juni pronounced “yoo-nee”

juli pronouned “yoo-lee”

august pronouned “ow-goost”–refer to the post I wrote on vowels to learn more about the ‘u‘ sound.

september pronounced “september” with a flipped ‘r‘

oktober pronouned “ohk-toh-ber” with a flipped ‘r‘

november pronounced “no-vem-ber” with a flipped ‘r‘

desember pronounced “deh-sem-ber” with a flipped ‘r‘

Mostly cognates, piece of cake, right?  Just remember some of the minor spelling differences

Ok, on to days of the week…

mandag pronounced “mahn-dog”

tirsdag pronounced “teersh-dog”

onsdag pronounced “oons-dog”

torsdag pronounced “toorsh-dog”

fredag pronounced “fray-dog”

lørdag pronounced “lur-dog”

søndag pronounced “suhn-dog”  (consult vowel post for details on the “ø” sound

Ok, now here are some other important words that are associated with time.

et minutt -a minute

en time an hour (pronounced “teem-eh”)

en dag a day (pronounced “dog”)

en uke a week (pronounced “ook-eh”)

en måned a month (pronounced “moan-ed”)

et år a year (pronounced “oar”)

et tiår a decade (pronouned “tee-oar”)

And then we have seasons….

sommer (summer), høst (fall), vinter (winter), and vår (spring).

Now a few adverbs to finish the tid tema (time theme)

i dag - today (i is pronouned “ee”)

i morgen - tomorrow

i går - yesterday

i år - this year

neste år - next year

i fjor - last year

nå - now

da - then

I think that’s enough for now, but if I think of any more, I’ll write another post.  Perhaps next post I will try to use most of these words in sentences and write a little story. 

Nå er det tid for meg å spise frokost og gjøre meg klar til arbeid.  Now it’s time for me to eat breakfast and get ready for work.

 
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Cognates

Posted by Kari
May
22
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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Flip those Rs.

Posted by Kari
Feb
20
2009

One of you eager learners requested that I do a little lesson on flipping Rs.  You might be wondering what flipping means vs. rolling.  In Spanish, for example, you roll and flip Rs.  In Norwegian, you just flip them.  The difference is how long you let your tongue vibrate for on the roof of your mouth.  In Spanish, when a word ends in R, it is usually rolled.  In the word tres (three), however, the R is flipped. Flipping is shorter. 

It is hard to teach this kind of pronunciation without being right there in front of you so you can see my mouth and hear the sounds I produce, but I’ll try to explain it.  To flip your R, start by saying “aaahh” as if the doctor is looking down your throat with a popsicle stick laying flat on your tongue.  Then pretend the popsicle stick is gone, lift your tongue in a kind of curling upward motion and stop quickly after you hit the roof of your mouth.  Practice this many times until you hopefully hear what sounds like a cross between an R and a D.  It really almost does sound like a D. 

Just to clarify, not every R in Norwegian is meant to be flipped.  Like the word norsk (Norwegian) for example, is pronounced “norshk.”  And the word fort (fast) is pronounced “fooort.”  Usually when an R is at the end of a word, such as many verbs in the present tense like gleder (looks forward to), elsker (loves), svømmer (swims) and sitter (sits), the R is to be flipped.  Or when the R is somewhere in the middle of the word, it is often flipped, like in frist (deadline), trappene (the stairs), krydder (spices), and markere (infinitive of ‘to mark’).

Most Rs at the beginnings of words are flipped as well.  Such as røre (infinitive of to move), religion (religion), and regner (present tense of ‘to rain’). 

There are actually very few instances in which you do not flip your Rs in Norwegian, and they are few and far between, so it’s a good idea for you to practice up on the flipping method so that you can pronuonce your Rs correctly.  I hope my instructions for flipping your Rs make sense.  If you have some sort of audio to listen to, I suggest you practice in front of a mirror while listening to someone speak Norwegian.  If you can both see what your mouth is doing and you know what it is supposed to sound like, it should be easier to figure out how to reproduce the noise.  Happy flipping!

 
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Å uttale norske vokaler

Posted by Kari
Feb
15
2009

To pronounce Norwegian vowels.  If all that people know about det norske språket (the Norwegian language) is the way that it sounds, they usually assume that it is a really difficult language to learn.  I must tell you that I strongly disagree.  Norwegian pronunciation usually proves to be the most difficult part of the language for beginners to learn, but if you know a few general rules, it’s not so bad.  Hvordan uttaler man norsk?  Voor-don ootaller mon norshhhhk? How does one pronouce Norwegian?

Norwegian vowels are the trickiest part of learning pronunciation.  For one, there are 3 vowels in the Norwegian language that English doesn’t even have: æ, ø, å- pronounced:  æ as in ‘cat’, ø said as if you were being punched in the stomach, and å, like ‘oh’ said as Minnesotan as possible.

In addition to æ, ø, and å, there are 5 more vowels: e, i, o, u, and you are probably wondering what the last is.  In Norwegian, the letter y is often considered a vowel.  Y på norsk (in Norwegian) is pronounced by rounding your lips into a small circle and trying to say ‘e’ as in weeee.  E på norsk is pronounced like a long ‘a’ or ‘eh’ like they say in Canada.  The exception to this rule is if the ‘e’ comes at the end of a word, it is pronounced like ‘a’ as in ‘a dog or a door’.  I på norsk is pronounced ‘e’ as in weeee, unless it is followed by double consonants like the verb å ligge (to lie) and then the i is pronounced like it is in the English word ‘pig.’  O is usually pronounced like oo as in ’shoe’ except in rare circumstances like the word folk pronounced exactly how it looks (just like English, but the ‘l’ is pronounced, not silent).  Lastly, u på norsk is usually pronounced like the French pronounce the letter, which is extremely hard to describe.  The closest I can describe the pronunciation of the letter ‘u’ is like the word ‘ewww’ as in gross, but say it faster and sharper.

Another important thing to remember about vowels is that their pronunciation may change depending on what follows them in a word.  For example, in the verb å drømme (infinitive form of to dream), the vowel ø is short, but in the past tense (drømte), the vowel is long.  As a general rule, a vowel is long if it is only followed by one consonant and short if it is followed by double consonants.

How would you guess that the following sentence is pronounced?  På trappene ligger sko i en kø (On the stairs lie shoes in a line).

If you said ‘poe trahpp-inn-a liggehr skoo ee ehhn kuh’ or something to that effect you would be correct.

Work on those vowels and you will be just fine.

 
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