Knowledge base

Undeniably, the huge popularity of Norway, as well as the Norwegian language itself, was brought by a series called SKAM. Thanks to its simple, yet authentic vibe, it turned out to be a global phenomenon. The stories of a group of high-school friends from Oslo pulled in front of the screens millions of viewers, not only from Scandinavia or Europe, but from all over the world. Thanks to this more and more young people, following the whereabouts of charismatic teenagers, began to wonder: is Norwegian difficult?   Even though Norway is a country larger than Poland, Norwegian is spoken by only about 5 million people. This language belongs to the Germanic group of languages, which means that sometimes we can find words that sound familiar, and which are usually derived from German. But does this mean that Norwegian is the phonetic twin of German? You couldn’t be more wrong! Do not let single German-sounding words fool you; Norwegian boasts an original melody and a sing-song effect to it, which is really difficult to learn, especially for a foreigner whose native language belongs to a different language family. So, is this the only difficulty which we will have to face when learning Norwegian? Phonetics and dialects As we delve deeper into the issue of learning Norwegian, we discover the lack of one “right” Norwegian. There are no specific pronunciation standards; instead, there are over 400 different dialects in use. Why is the Norwegian language so diverse? The answer is simple – it stems from topography and history. Norway is a mountainous country. In the past, such landscape made it really difficult for people to travel, which resulted in most Norwegian villages developing a variety of dialects, some resembling more the Danish language while others were closer to Swedish. Concerning the written variety of the language, there are two official systems – Bokmål, which is used by around 90% of Norwegians and Nynorsk, which can be mainly heard in Western Norway. But…

Learning languages can be challenging – especially when we’re ambitious about it and acquiring just the basic skills is not enough. Discovering dialects can be surprising; Norwegian is particularly sneaky with this, as it can sound entirely different depending on the region you are visiting. Hence, being familiar with one dialect does not guarantee effortless communication anywhere else in the country. And how are things with English? Fortunately it’s not so complicated!   In the case of English, we can distinguish two main, basic varieties: British and American. And even though the accents can be quite messy and the attempts to comprehend and communicate with a native Scottish person can be discouraging for beginners learning English, the basic rules of the language remain the same and the differences will not be noticeable until much later during our language learning journey. There are, however, instances when this difference is crucial, e.g., when rendering localisation or proofreading services. British English: what are its distinctive features? So what is the easiest way to recognise we’re handling a text written using British English? A quick glance at words such as colour, aesthetics, demeanour or paediatric will tell us all. Color, esthetics, demeanor and pediatric are their American equivalents, so it’s easy to notice that British English stays closer to tradition and the original spelling of words borrowed from other languages, such as French, German, or Latin.   The use of “s” instead of a voiced “z” in verbs such as specialise, utilise or apologise is another characteristic of British English. They might be pronounced the same way, but the spelling is rather sneaky. A similar pattern can be observed with more complex words, such as British draught – in the American variety they are significantly simplified, as on the other side of the pond we will see it spelled as draft.   For many the British pronunciation is synonymous with that of the Royal Family; it’s worth knowing that you are unlikely to hear…