I heard a while ago that Norwegian is actually Icelandic that was basically reconstructed (at least print-wise) with Swedish and Danish rules/diction/etc because a lot of stuff was lost (or imposed by the victors) after one war or another. Any truth to that? Obviously a lot of evolving happened between then and now, and they’re different languages, but that would (partially) explain the noted compatibility of Swedish and Norwegian (and Danish/Norwegian in at least one post) but not Swedish and Danish.
And in Swedish it means “may” in the sense “may God strike you down” rather than “may I have some more?”.
Speaking as a Swede, this is completely true. There’s actually a more or less sensical etymology behind it, but you wouldn’t know it to look at it.
I do know that, from a linguistic/historic perspective rather than a mutual intelligibility perspective, Norwegian is more closely related to Icelandic and Faroese than Swedish or Danish. One sign of that that I know of is that Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese have the classical Indo-European gender system of male/female/neuter, while Swedish and Danish have two genders (uter and neuter).
They’re all basically bastardized “Icelandic”, by which I mean Icelandic is the closest to the common language spoken a 1000 years ago. Then Swedish and Danish picked up a lot more words from other languages (French, German, English, you name it) due to more interaction with the rest of Europe.
Iceland (and Norway, to a much lesser extent) had much less interaction with the continent, due to them being under another King. And hence are more similar to ancient Norse.
I can for example still read Swedish 12.th century texts, which most Swedes cannot.
I’d say that’s mostly incorrect.
The root language of Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish is Old Norse. The languages diverged into Old East Norse and Old West Norse, with the latter being what was spoken and written in Iceland and Norway. Then major shifts in the languages happened in the Scandinavian countries, but not on Iceland. With a Scandinavian bias, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish were modernized, while Icelandic stayed primitive (i.e. less changed).
Next Norway was brought down by the black plague and ended up being ruled by Denmark. This mainly had an effect on written language, which didn’t actually matter to most people, since they didn’t write, so it’s not like this dramatically changed the Norwegian language at the time.
When Norway was regaining indepence there was much disagreement on whether they should keep writing Danish, and just adapt it to spoken Norwegian, or if they should create a more wholly Norwegian written form, based on the dialects least affected by Danish rule. We ended up with both.
To put this roughly in perspective, WormTheRed could sail down to England of the 13th century and make himself understood. Iceland has to a very large degree regulated the change introduced to its language, as opposed to Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.
(As a Norwegian, I can understand Swedish perfectly well, with the exception of some regional accents and some words. Like “kudde.” The intonation is a bit different from what I’m used to, far more melodious and running together, while Norwegian - to me - sounds more clipped and terse. Reading Swedish takes some getting used to, due to a more prevalent use of accents, but is beautiful for poetry and such. Understanding spoken Danish is possible, but hard, for me as a north-west coast Norwegian. For southern coast Norwegians, like people from Kristiansand, it’s easier because they both use soft consonants. The word “bake,” which to me is pronounced with a sharp “k,” is pronounced “bage,” with a slurred “g.” And Northern Norwegians are a breed entirely unto themselves.)
For a quick primer of the Norwegian language as it is today, you need some historical perspective. From 1536, Norway and Denmark was in a realunion. Before that, in 1397 to 1523, we were in a personalunion, i.e. with a joint head of state but independently governed.
But now, we were pretty much merged, with a collective head of state. Norway was a backwater in most senses and if you wanted to study, you pretty much had to go to Copenhagen. And the Norwegian language, which had never been adequately normalized into a formal, written language, dwindled. It had its staunch supporters, but since formal documents were required to be written in Danish, it was pretty much a lost cause. Norwegians had to write in Danish, but on this occasion the relative analphabetism of our citizens inoculated us because . . .
In 1814, Denmark was declared the defeated in the Napoleonic wars. And had to give Norway up for Sweden, leading to the Sweden-Norway Union of 1814-1905. Norway managed to get a blind-sider in when nobody were looking and ratified our Constitution in 1814. The Swedish rule was always quite benevolent and less interfering than the Danish rule had been, aside from some military skirmishes when it was becoming obvious that Norway was looking to break the union. But Swedish was suddenly declared the formal language and so a lot of our written records of the time look very curious, from a linguistical perspective.
Now, while things were changing and the Norwegian patriotism was becoming more obvious, a lot of movements started looking into the “Norwegian” language at the same time, with different goals. One faction thought we should stick with written Danish, since the infrastructure and rules were already in place. Extremists of that wing thought we should actually tear ourselves from Sweden and seek to become a vassal state under Denmark. The opposite side proffered the works of Ivar Aasen, who travelled around Norway and sampled all the dialects and wrote a standardized form of “rural” Norwegian. They said “This is true Norwegian for true Norwegians!” and a major part of that wing wanted us to tear ourself free from Sweden and become independent again.
So, we finally did, in 1905. We were pretty much let go, to be fair, but there had been some armed stand-offs as the somewhat rabid Swedish head of state at the time wanted to invade to reassert control of the profitable lumber- and silver trade. But to this day, we still have two official Norwegian languages. “Bokmål” (“Book Spoken”), which dominates the eastern side of Norway and has more in common with Danish than anything else. And “Nynorsk” (“New Norwegian”) which is pretty much a minority language and based on the rural dialects of the western coast and northern areas.
Regrettably, nobody ever thought of re-introducing proper Norwegian, which is what the Icelandic speak. (Of course, Norway would have trouble maintaining it in it’s pure form - WormTheRed might shed some light on the steps Iceland has had to take to maintain the language.)
To condense this all to a currently appliccable rule of thumb;
- The southern-coast Norwegians will have an easier time of understanding Danish than the rest of us.
- The eastern Norwegians (Oslo, suburbs and counties) will have an easier time of understanding Swedish than the rest of us.
- The western/northwestern-coast Norwegians don’t want to be understood, we just like whining.
- Nobody understands the Northern Norwegians.
- Everyone forgets about the Lapps.
The silliest sounding words that ever I heard spoken were a Dane speaking the Danish words for “strawberries and cream.” It was a big wad of gutteral mutterings. This same Dane said that speakers of English sound snobbish.
Aren’t there some minor glottal stops in Danish?
I’ll give that a try.
To simplify (quite a bit), Iceland has a language-board, which consists of the greatest minds on Icelandic. Their job is to translate new words into Icelandic, mostly by using or combining existing words, and then they go into circulation through the newspapers and TV.
A few examples:
Jeans - Gallabuxur (coverallpants)
Computer - Tölva (a forecaster, ancient fortune-teller)
TV - Sjónvarp (sight-thrower)
Radio - Útvarp (out-thrower)
These days, however, new words come so quickly into the language that even Icelandic has submitted to neo-english. But those words are mostly cursewords and computer-lingo.
Interesting. Just for my curiosity and amusement, are there any that are potentially embarassing, like the British vs American fanny and fag?
Three examples that might easily happen:
Att bolla.
Swedish: To play with a ball (pass a football, throw some catches and so on)
Danish/Norwegian: Make penis ensue
Pul(l)a:
Norwegian: Aprox. to work hard
Swedish: To fingerf**k
Rolig:
Danish: Calm
Swedish: Fun
That’s excellent! From now on I’ll always refer to TV as sight-thrower. 
Also, Bärs.
Swedish: beer
Norwegian: shit/feces
Could be embarassing at the pub.
That’s correct for Danish, wrong for Norwegian.
The wrong way round, and inaccurate for both meaings.
Pula (Swedish): light work, “pula lite i hagen” do a little gardening
Pule (Norwegian): to f**k, “pl litt i hagen”, have sex in the garden
No, “pulla” really means fingerfuck in swedish.
I’ve made the mistake of ordering “the bög” (a specific type of ham, in my home dialect) in Stockholm once.
Errr, “å bolle” is pretty commonly understood to mean The Great Act. At least around here, and around where I was born (Oslo currently, Aukra originally)
Since we’re doing this, I could add:
Tott
Swedish: A small cute kid (most often “lintott”)
Icelandic: A bj
And sorry Naita, I haven’t spoken Norwegian in 7 years, so I mixed up the languages (but the fingerf-ing is true, as Etumretniw said)
Not to worry, as Etumretniw pointed out ‘bolle’ is indeed Norwegian slang for having intercourse. It also means a bowl or a bun (baked goods), and I’ve only ever used it in those meanings.
I also messed up my example sentences for pula/pulla/pule, as Swedish for a garden is different from Norwegian.
So what IS the Swedish word for pillowcover??
Örngott - which word for word (ETA: in its present meaning) would be Eaglegood
It can also be translated as eagle candy or treats(as in something you would feed your pet eagle).