What's strange in Norwegian?
By Marie Aalen
If a student starts a personal email with "How are you? I'm fine," we must be quick to explain that even though you say it that way in English, it has a slightly different meaning directly translated into Norwegian.
But we are not always aware of how many of the expressions we have in Norwegian can easily be incomprehensible or misunderstood by second language learners. Are we sure that the students really understood what was meant by "having a good time" when we read a text about it in class?
NORWEGIAN DIFFERENCES: What is obvious to native speakers is often not so obvious to students. PHOTO: Inger Kristin Hognestad
In search of "the weird"
When preparing for teaching, it is always a good idea to read the text we are going to review carefully, looking for anything that might be “strange” in the text, whether it is words, expressions or grammar. As we teach, we will gain more and more experience in seeing what needs to be explained and practiced. Because what is obvious to us is often not so obvious to the students.
Languages without "name" and "has"
For example, have you considered that many languages lack the verb “to be” ? In most languages, people would rather say “my name is..” or “I am called” or “they call me.” Is that perhaps why students often say: “What does it mean in Norwegian?” instead of “What is it called in Norwegian?” Another verb that is missing in many languages is “to have.” In several languages, such as Russian, Hindi, Urdu, and Arabic, the form “to me is..” is used instead. This can be confusing for second language learners who do not already know Western European languages.
Rarest in the world
On the website Corpus Linguistics, See: WALS http://idibon.com/the-weirdest-languages/ there is an overview of the world's weirdest languages, in the sense of what is most unusual. Here it turns out, for example, that making yes/no questions by putting the verb first in the sentence is quite unusual. Only 1.4% of languages put the verb first in questions, as Norwegian, German and English do. Most languages have a question particle that they insert to show that it is a question, such as kya in Urdu and hal in Arabic.
More or fewer pronouns?
Adding personal endings to verbs instead of using pronouns is common. Only 10% of the languages studied use pronouns. The pronouns are also not distributed in the same way, some have more (like Arabic with male and female gender also in the 2nd person), and some have fewer (like Urdu, Finnish and Turkish with one pronoun for he and she ). The problem that many languages are not familiar with definite and indefinite forms in their language is well known.
SOV more common than SVO
When it comes to word order, 35% of languages have subject – verbal – object (like Norwegian), while 41% have SOV, namely the main verb at the end. The inversion that we have in Norwegian is very strange, to the extent that it is easy for Norwegian youth to switch to the “wrong” word order when speaking Norwegian multi-ethnolect (so-called kebab Norwegian), while it requires hard work for our participants to automate the “verb in place number two”.
But then there are all the ways of expressing it. If you say you're having a "bad time"* when you meet a student on the way to the bus, she might be a little more worried about you than you thought.
(*) Translated from the English "having a bad time" it can be misunderstood as "it's not going so well".
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Marie Aalen is the editor of NorskPluss series and has been a teacher at Oslo Voksenopplæring Rosenhof for 30 years. She has extensive experience in teaching and using digital language courses. Marie Aalen has a major in Nordic studies and Norwegian as a second language in her field.