Learn about Norwegian dialects
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| Hi everybody! Anette here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Norwegian questions. |
| The question for this lesson is…Will a Norwegian who speaks another dialect be able to understand me? |
| Norway has a lot of dialects, so this can be a challenge for Norwegian learners. |
| As you may already know, Norwegian has two official writing systems, Bokmål and Nynorsk. A person's dialect will be the closest to one of these writing systems. |
| Norwegian dialects are usually divided into Northern Norwegian, Central Norwegian, Western Norwegian, and Eastern Norwegian. Remember—all of these groups have several dialects. |
| Many dialects developed in Norway because of the inability to communicate with other villages that were separated from each other by large mountains. This isolation meant that groups of Norwegians spoke differently even if they were only kilometers away. |
| When you learn Norwegian, your way of speaking will be closest to Bokmål, which is the most commonly used. Therefore, probably all Norwegians will understand you. |
| You, on the other hand, may struggle with all of the dialects and have some problems understanding a Norwegian speaking with a different dialect than you’re used to. |
| But, don't worry. Most Norwegians are very kind, and if you can’t understand them, they will switch to speaking something closer to Bokmål. |
| An important tip to remember is that Norwegians are very proud of their own dialect. Therefore, it’s better not to tell them if you prefer another dialect or find theirs hard to understand. You may end up offending someone! |
| How was this lesson? Pretty interesting, right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them! |
| Hade! Vi sees senere! |
| Bye. See you later! |
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