Old Norse had a great impact on the English language during the Viking Age.  However, even in modern day speech, with the introduction of new words, I find many parallels to English and Norwegian.  In Australia (at least) we have a word ‘more-some’.  I don’t know how it started – it could have been inspired [...]

Sometimes English-speaking movie titles don’t translate well into Norwegian so the titlists have to get creative.  Sometimes they just don’t bother and other times they put in a little too much effort.  Here are some of the more common changes in titles:
Movie Title: The Pacifier
Norwegian Title: Opperasjon barnevakt
English Translation: Operation Babysitter
Movie Title: Enchanted
Norwegian Title: Eventyr [...]

I was at the movies with my Norwegian friend the other day and she asked me ‘Har du en bong med deg? (Have you a ‘bong’ with you?’)  I stopped ‘I didn’t think it was that kind of movie!’  A moment of ‘what the?’ passed.  In her sentence I knew every word except bong and [...]

Hei, alle sammen!
In this Podcast we revise some of the basic conversational questions and answers from the last couple of podcast lessons.  The exercises encourage you to listen, think and speak.  Make sure you say the sentences out loud so you can judge if you are pronouncing them properly.
NOTE: You will notice a difference between [...]

Morphology is the study of words.  How words are structured, patterned and evolve tell us a lot about who influenced what language.  In How Vikings Changed the English Language: Spelling we discussed how words were spelt in Old English and Norse – phonetically.  However, as English went through the Great Vowel Shift English spelling was [...]

“Mamma. Ka du gjør? Ka du gjør?!” I couldn’t answer – I had no idea what Lilu was trying to say.
“Ka du gjøøøør?! Mamma!” I looked at Moose, feeling a little hopeless.
He said with a smirk, “She’s asking you what you’re doing.”
Had I missed something? I thought that to ask someone what they were doing you say [...]

Hei, alle sammen!
Thank you for being so patient with us. We haven’t uploaded a podcast in a while as we’ve just had a baby who is taking up a lot of our time. We greatly appreciate your encouragement and are excited to get back in the saddle again. We are only new at teaching Norwegian [...]

There are two questions I am always asked:
Is it easy to get a job in Norway?
Is it hard to get a job in Norway?
The only definite answer is: ‘it depends’.  It depends on your education.  It depends on your profession.  It depends on your Norwegian language skills.  And, it depends on your luck.  There is [...]

When you look at Norwegian words and English words they are very similar.  In fact, you can often make out what a Norwegian word is by the way it looks, however, the sounds can be quiet different.
One of the major changes that occurred to the English language is known as the Great Vowel Shift.  This [...]

One of our readers has directed me to a great resource for my study of the effects of Norwegian on the English language – a series of videos on YouTube by the scholar Alexander Arguelles.  The videos present an interesting overview of the Germanic language, and as Norwegian is one of the languages in the Germanic [...]