Norwegian

Understand

Unlike many other languages, there is no standard spoken Norwegian, and Norwegians generally speak their native dialects even in the most formal situations. There are even two different standards for writing Norwegian: Bokmål and Nyorsk. Neither of these standards is the native dialect of any single Norwegian; they are both constructed from a variety of Norwegian dialects. Norwegian Bokmål is very close to Danish and phrasebooks for the two languages can largely be used interchangeably (noting some systematic differences in spelling). Nynorsk was constructed from dialects less influenced by Danish and thus seen as more purely Norwegian. Norwegian is written with the "standard Latin alphabet" (identical to the English alphabet) and three additional vowels ("Æ"/"æ", "Ø"/"ø" and "Å"/"å"; respectively added in that order to the end of the other 26 letters; the alphabet is identical to that of Danish). Some of these letters are used very rarely (notably "c", "w" and "x"), often because they may only be found in loanwords, or that they are disfavoured in comparison to more archaic or newer spellings. Like in English, diacritic marks are relatively rare (traits like the dot over the "i" and the circle above the "å" aren't considered diacritics, but as parts of distinct letters); the most common occurrence of them is the use of an acute accent with the final "e" in words of French origin where stress is to be put on that "e", such as in "idé" (idea), allé (avenue) and kafé (café). Because Norwegian is a Germanic language, getting a grasp of some basics shouldn't be too hard if you already speak English, German and/or Dutch.

False friends While the Danish and Norwegian vocabularies are almost identical, Swedish is easier to understand for Norwegians because of similar pronunciation. Norwegian and Swedish however have many differences in vocabulary including "false friends". Swedes in Norway and Norwegians in Sweden often pick up local words to avoid confusion. For instanc