# Norwegian immigrants? just say Nei! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 13, 2018, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509 "2018-01-13T03:26:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Plumpudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Plumpudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plumpudding)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2018, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/61 "2018-01-16T23:05:12Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Moving to a place where you don’t understand the written signs, including the labels on food, can be a bit of a bitch. And unless you’ve got personal anchors, it’s easy to end up isolated. > > Mind you: one of my coworkers in Sweden, a Spaniard like me, one time took to telling me that if I lived in the bigger town like he did instead of staying in the little village where we worked, I would have been able to make friends. > I asked him, ok, you’ve lived here 20 years, how many friends do you and your wife have. > He thought, got a sad look and went back to his desk. > Norwegians don’t have as much of a reputation of being “more closed than a rock” as Swedes do, but they’re in the family… I lived two years in Italy and I’m on my fourth year in The Netherlands. You (well I did, at least) get used to signs and labels. At least in Norway, people don’t usually end up defaulting to Norwegian when in company that doesn’t understand it. _That_ is a bitch. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2018, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/62 "2018-01-16T23:45:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > You know, for someone whose mother was an immigrant, Heaven forfend we mention his wife… ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/63 "2018-01-17T06:44:00Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Could you two provide translations? I realize they’re going to be approximate, but even if they’re nowhere near as colorful as the original they’ll be better than google translate. All I understand is something along the lines of “wouldn’t want to go there even after Hell freezes over, their damned political system is a bloody incomprehensible mess anyway”. Apologies. Your Google translate was pretty spot on, I just pulled up the old meme about people from Northern Norway being particularly proficient swearers, with an impressive vocabulary of creative swear words. And then tried to imitate that, with moderate success. THAT is, unfortunately, impossible to translate unless the other language has a similar stereotype, and one is intimately familiar with that one as well. Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/64 "2018-01-17T06:46:15Z")
Oh, my google translate left half the words in Norwegian and the rest didn’t make sense. That was me filtering the google translate through Spanish cussing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509.md?page=3)