There are many ways to distinguish among Norwegian dialects. These criteria are drawn from the work
Vårt Eget Språk/Talemålet (1987) by
Egil Børre Johnsen. These criteria generally provide the analytical means for identifying most dialects, though most Norwegians rely on experience to tell them apart.
Grammars and syntax Infinitive forms One of the most important differences among dialects is which ending, if any, verbs have in the infinitive form. In Old Norwegian, most verbs had an infinitive ending (-a), and likewise in a modern Norwegian dialect, most of the verbs of the dialect either have or would have had an infinitive ending. There are five varieties of the infinitive ending in Norwegian dialects, constituting two groups: One ending (western dialects) • Infinitive ending with -a, e.g., , , common in southwestern Norway, including the areas surrounding
Bergen (although not in the city of Bergen itself) and
Stavanger (city) • Infinitive ending with -e, e.g., , , common in
Troms,
Finnmark, areas of
Sogn og Fjordane and
Møre og Romsdal, southern counties, and a few other areas. • Apocopic infinitive, where no vowel is added to the infinitive form, e.g., , , common in certain areas of
Nordland Two different endings (eastern dialects) • Split infinitive, in which some verbs end with -a while others end with -e; e.g. versus , common in Eastern Norway • Split infinitive, with
apocope, e.g., (//) versus , common in some areas in
Sør-Trøndelag and
Nord-Trøndelag The split distribution of endings is related to the syllable length of the verb in Old Norse. "Short-syllable" () verbs in Norse kept their endings. The "long-syllable" () verbs lost their (unstressed) endings or had them converted to -e.
Dative case The original Germanic contextual difference between the
dative and
accusative cases, standardized in
modern German and
Icelandic, has degenerated in spoken
Danish and
Swedish, a tendency which spread to Bokmål too.
Ivar Aasen treated the dative case in detail in his work,
Norsk Grammatik (1848), and use of Norwegian dative as a living grammatical case can be found in a few of the earliest
Landsmål texts. However, the dative case has never been part of official Landsmål/Nynorsk. It is, however, present in some spoken dialects north of Oslo, Romsdal, and south and northeast of Trondheim. The grammatical phenomenon is highly threatened in the mentioned areas, while most speakers of conservative varieties have been highly influenced by the national standard languages, using only the traditional accusative word form in both cases. Often, though not always, the difference in meaning between the dative and accusative word forms can thus be lost, requiring the speaker to add more words to specify what was actually meant, to avoid potential loss of information.
Future tense There are regional variations in the use of future tense, for example, "He is going to travel.": :
. :
. :
. :
. Syntax Syntax can vary greatly between dialects, and the tense is important for the listener to get the meaning. For instance, a question can be formed without the traditional "asking-words" (how, where, what, who..) For example, the sentence
? (in Bokmål),
? (in Nynorsk), literally: "How much is the clock?" i.e. "What time is it?" can be put in, among others, the following forms: :
? (Is
the clock much?) (stress is on "the clock") :
? (
Is it much, the clock?) (stress on "is") :
? (literally: "What is the clock?") :
? (literally: What the clock is?), or, using another word for clock,
? :
? (literally: What is she?).
Pronunciation of vowels Diphthongization of monophthongs Old Norse had the
diphthongs , , and , but the Norwegian spoken in the area around
Setesdal has shifted two of the traditional diphthongs and innovated four more from long vowels, and, in some cases, also short vowels. West Norwegian dialects have also innovated new diphthongs. In
Midtre you can find the following:
Monophthongization of diphthongs The Old Norse diphthongs , , and have experienced
monophthongization in certain dialects of modern Norwegian. This shift originated in Old East Norse, which is reflected in the fact that Swedish and Danish overwhelmingly exhibit this change. Monophthongization in Norway ends on the coast west of Trondheim and extends southeast in a triangle into central Sweden. Some Norwegian dialects, east of Molde, for example, have lost only and .
Leveling (/ in Norwegian) This is a phenomenon in which the root vowel and end vowel in a word approximate each other. For example, the old Norse has become or in certain dialects. There are two varieties in Norwegian dialects – one in which the two vowels become identical, the other where they are only similar. Leveling exists only in inland areas in Southern Norway, and areas around Trondheim.
Vowel shift in strong verbs In all but Oslo and coastal areas just south of the capital, the present tense of certain verbs take on a new vowel (umlaut), e.g., becomes (in Oslo, it becomes ).
Pronunciation of consonants Eliminating in the plural indefinite form In some areas, the is not pronounced in all or some words in their plural indefinite form. There are four categories: • The is retained – most of Eastern Norway, the South-Eastern coast, and across to areas north and east of Stavanger. • The disappears altogether – Southern tip of Norway, coastal areas north of Bergen, and inland almost to Trondheim. • The is retained in certain words but not in others – coastal areas around Trondheim, and most of Northern Norway • The is retained in certain words and in weak feminine nouns, but not in others – one coast area in Nordland.
Phonetic realization of Most dialects realize as the
alveolar tap or
alveolar trill . However, for the last 200 years the
uvular approximant has been gaining ground in Western and Southern Norwegian dialects, with
Kristiansand, Stavanger, and Bergen as centers. The uvular R has also been adopted in aspiring patricians in and around Oslo, to the point that it was for some time fashionable to "import" governesses from the Kristiansand area. In certain regions, such as Oslo, the flap has become realized as a
retroflex flap (generally called "thick L") , which exists only in Norway, a few regions in Sweden, and in completely unrelated languages. The sound coexists with other
retroflexions in Norwegian dialects. In some areas it also applies to words that end with "rd," for example with (farm) being pronounced . The uvular R has gained less acceptance in eastern regions, and linguists speculate that dialects that use retroflexes have a "natural defense" against uvular R and thus will not adopt it. However, the dialect of
Arendal retains the retroflexes, while featuring the uvular R in remaining positions, e.g. . In large parts of Northern Norway, especially in the northern parts of
Nordland county and southern parts of
Troms county, as well as several parts of
Finnmark county, another variant is still common: the voiced post-alveolar sibilant fricative . In front of voiceless consonants, the realisation of this R is unvoiced as well, to . Thus, where one in the southern and Trøndelag dialects will get or or , in areas realising voiced R as , one will get .
Palatalization In areas north of an isogloss running between Oslo and Bergen,
palatalization occurs for the n (IPA ), l (), t () and d () sounds in varying degrees. Areas just south and southwest of Trondheim palatalize both the main and subordinate syllable in words (e.g., ), but other areas only palatalize the main syllable ().
Voicing of plosives Voiceless stops () have become voiced () intervocalically after long vowels (, vs. , ) on the extreme southern coast of Norway, including Kristiansand, Mandal and Stavanger. The same phenomenon appears in Sør-Trøndelag and one area in Nordland.
Segmentation The geminate in southwestern Norway has become , while just east in southcentral Norwegian the final is lost, leaving . The same sequence has been palatalized in Northern Norway, leaving the palatal lateral .
Assimilation The second consonant in the consonant clusters , , and has assimilated to the first across most of Norway, leaving , , and respectively. Western Norway, though not in Bergen, retains the cluster. In Northern Norway this same cluster is realized as the palatal lateral .
Consonant shift in conjugation of masculine nouns Although used less frequently, a subtle shift takes place in conjugating a masculine noun from indefinitive to definitive, e.g., from to (, [beçːen] or ). This is found in rural dialects along the coast from
Farsund Municipality to the border between Troms and Finnmark.
The kj - sj merger Many people, especially in the younger generation, have lost the differentiation between the (written ) and (written ) sounds, realizing both as . This is by many considered to be a normal development in language change (although as most language changes, the older generation and more conservative language users often lament the degradation of the language). The
functional load is relatively low, and as often happens, similar sounds with low functional loads merge.
Tonemes and intonation There are great differences between the intonation systems of different Norwegian dialects.
Vocabulary First person pronoun, nominative plural Three variations of the first person plural nominative pronoun exist in Norwegian dialects: • , (pronounced ), common in parts of Eastern Norway, most of Northern Norway, coastal areas close to
Trondheim, and one sliver of Western Norway • , or , in Southern and most of Western Norway, areas inland of Trondheim, and a few smaller areas • , common in areas of
Sør-Trøndelag,
Gudbrandsdalen,
Nordmøre and parts of
Sunnmøre.
First person pronoun, nominative singular There is considerable variety in the way the first person singular nominative pronoun is pronounced in Norwegian dialects. They appear to fall into three groups, within which there are also variations: • and , in which the hard 'g' may or may not be included. This is common in most of Southern and Western Norway, Trøndelag, and most of Northern Norway. In some areas of Western Norway, it is common to say . • (pronounced ), in a few areas in Western Norway (
Romsdal/
Molde) and
Snåsa in
Trøndelag • , jè , or jei , in areas around Oslo, and north along the Swedish border, almost to Trondheim, as well as one region in Troms
Personal pronouns Possessive pronouns The word "not" The Norwegian word for the English
not exists in these main categories: : – Oslo, Kristiansand, Bergen, Ålesund, most of Finnmark, Vestfold and lowland parts of Telemark, and some cities in Nordland. : – most of Southern, Northern, Western Norway and high-land parts of Telemark. : – Trøndelag : - parts of
Salten District, Nordland : or ittje – areas north of Oslo, along the Swedish border : , ente or ette – Mostly along the Swedish border south of Oslo in Østfold : / : / Examples of the sentence "I am not hungry," in Norwegian: : :
. (Bokmål) : :
. (Nynorsk) : :
. (Romsdal) : :
. (Trøndelag) : :
. (Salten) : :
. (Narvik) : :
. (Hærland)
Interrogative words Some common interrogative words take on forms such as: == See also ==