Manny’s status > Likes and Comments
4 likes · Like
I must have read at least fifty Norwegian books, and I don't recognise Cedolf's dialect at all. Curious to hear from Norwegians!
Northern Norwegian, most probably. Either that, or from where I'm from - but we'd not say 'farken', but 'farsken'.
That fits! Cedolf is a young working-class man from the Tromsø area, born around 1890.
So some people from your part of Norway still say "Dokker"? I had never seen the word before, at least as far as I can recall. I am not sure why Alberte's family do not use it. I'm guessing it's either because they're from the South, or because they're of a higher social class, or both. There seems to be a strong overlap between those two categories.
I'm from Western Norway, mind, but I often find myself surprised at how many similarities there are between my dialect (Kristiansund) and dialects way up North. Not in cadence, obviously, but in words. 'Dokker' would be one of them, I suppose. But this is not something "some" people say, it's everyone where I'm from at least. In Trondheim and Trøndelag in general they typically shorten 'dokker' to just 'dokk'. And, famously, 'itj' instead of 'ikkje' or 'ikke'. (I say 'ikkje'.) And yes - I would assume Alberte and co. just say 'dere'?
What's typical for my dialect (and also in Northern Norway) is heavy, almost exaggerated, palatalization. Easy to make fun of. So in 'småpian te storkaran' I read that as 'småpianj te storkarannj' lol.
It is amazing what a variety of dialects your language has in comparison to the size of its overall speaker-base! I wonder if that's in some way related to the extraordinary number of world-class authors Norway has produced? Perhaps you become more sensitive to the nuances of language when you hear it in so many different forms?
I agree, it's quite funny in fact: 10-15 minutes South of my hometown and I risk running into someone whose dialect is not just Greek but pure gibberish to me, and 10-15 minutes North and it's entirely different again. Not everyone is as attuned to the differences, though. For people in Oslo, I just sound like I'm from Trondheim, much to my chagrin a lot of the time.
Interesting idea. Something kind of akin to many tonal-language speakers, like Chinese and Vietnamese, having a much higher frequency of trained musicians with perfect pitch?
I am reminded of “Shall We Have a Little Talk?”, a Golden Age SF short story by Robert Sheckley in which they discover a planet where language evolution is speeded up by a factor of a thousand. I have only just realised that in fact it's about Norway :)
back to top
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Manny
(new)
Jul 12, 2026 05:01PM
I must have read at least fifty Norwegian books, and I don't recognise Cedolf's dialect at all. Curious to hear from Norwegians!
reply
|
flag
Northern Norwegian, most probably. Either that, or from where I'm from - but we'd not say 'farken', but 'farsken'.
That fits! Cedolf is a young working-class man from the Tromsø area, born around 1890.So some people from your part of Norway still say "Dokker"? I had never seen the word before, at least as far as I can recall. I am not sure why Alberte's family do not use it. I'm guessing it's either because they're from the South, or because they're of a higher social class, or both. There seems to be a strong overlap between those two categories.
I'm from Western Norway, mind, but I often find myself surprised at how many similarities there are between my dialect (Kristiansund) and dialects way up North. Not in cadence, obviously, but in words. 'Dokker' would be one of them, I suppose. But this is not something "some" people say, it's everyone where I'm from at least. In Trondheim and Trøndelag in general they typically shorten 'dokker' to just 'dokk'. And, famously, 'itj' instead of 'ikkje' or 'ikke'. (I say 'ikkje'.) And yes - I would assume Alberte and co. just say 'dere'?What's typical for my dialect (and also in Northern Norway) is heavy, almost exaggerated, palatalization. Easy to make fun of. So in 'småpian te storkaran' I read that as 'småpianj te storkarannj' lol.
It is amazing what a variety of dialects your language has in comparison to the size of its overall speaker-base! I wonder if that's in some way related to the extraordinary number of world-class authors Norway has produced? Perhaps you become more sensitive to the nuances of language when you hear it in so many different forms?
I agree, it's quite funny in fact: 10-15 minutes South of my hometown and I risk running into someone whose dialect is not just Greek but pure gibberish to me, and 10-15 minutes North and it's entirely different again. Not everyone is as attuned to the differences, though. For people in Oslo, I just sound like I'm from Trondheim, much to my chagrin a lot of the time. Interesting idea. Something kind of akin to many tonal-language speakers, like Chinese and Vietnamese, having a much higher frequency of trained musicians with perfect pitch?
I am reminded of “Shall We Have a Little Talk?”, a Golden Age SF short story by Robert Sheckley in which they discover a planet where language evolution is speeded up by a factor of a thousand. I have only just realised that in fact it's about Norway :)