Norwegian Dialects - Osprey (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Norwegian dialects are commonly divided into 5 main groups, North Norwegian (nordnorsk), Trndelag Norwegian (trndersk), Midland Norwegian (innlandsml), West Norwegian (vestnorsk), and East Norwegian (stnorsk). The dialects are generally mutually intelligible, but differ significantly with regards to accent, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. If not accustomed to a particular dialect, even a native Norwegian speaker may have difficulty understanding it. Dialects can be as local as farm clusters, but many linguists note an ongoing regionalization, diminishing or even elimination of local variations. Normalized speech, following the written languages Bokml and Nynorsk or the more conservative Riksml and Hgnorsk, is not in common use, except in parts of Finnmark (where the original Sami population learned Norwegian as a second language), in certain social groups in the major urban areas of Norway, in national broadcasting, and in courts and official decrees. Owing to geography and climate, Norwegian communities were often isolated from each other till the early 20th century. As a result, local dialects had a tendency to be influenced by each other in singular ways while developing their own idiosyncrasies. The community of Oppdal, for example, has characteristics in common with coastal dialects to the west, the dialects of northern Gudbrandsdalen to the south, and other dialects in Sr Trndelag from the north. The linguist Einar Haugen documented the particulars of the Oppdal dialect, and the writer Inge Krokann used it as a literary device. Other transitional dialects include the dialects of Romsdal and Arendal. On the other hand, newly industrialized communities near sources of hydroelectric power have developed dialects consistent w... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1282856