Norwegian Language

[Hunstad Knut]

Very interesting debate here! We norwegians could probably keep this
discussion up for ages, please let us know in a polite way when we are
overstaying our welcome :-)

I agree totally with Don that it is a shame that we don't use the norwegian
dialects to create more interesting dialogs in comics, books and films! But
as is already pointed out, many norwegians are _extremely_ touchy about
this! Resulting in norwegian bokmål ("Standard norwegian") beeing used in
almost anything public, especially if aimed towards children. One reason for
this is that the dialects are so regional. So no matter what you use as a
dialect for a villain, you will automatically have insulted one region of
the country!

About the Disney comics specifically, they came to Norway at a time when
comics where thought of in general as beeing unhealthy reading for small
children. In order to assure that this was good literature, they got this
teacher of norwegian language to do the dialogs. It was one important part
of the advertising to get people to buy this new comic series, where the
children now in a easy and fun way could learn correct norwegian!

The first attempt to change this, was "Lost in Andes", where the inhabitants
spoke nynorsk ("New norwegian", also an official "language", but so close to
bokmål that it is more like a dialect [and now I have already stamped on
many norwegian toes]), and without beeing norwegian, I think you will never
get close to understanding how much turmoil was created by that story the
first time around!

Almost all childrens movies are dubbed into norwegian, and with extremely
few exceptions, this is done in bokmål. That is one reason why I always see
new Disney movies in the undubbed version. Another reason is that the
translation is quite bad, they never bother about trying to get the double
meanings often present, which adds to the fun for adults. Especially the
song lyrics often have a quality closer to what you can see for "Aunt Mary's
40th anniversary" than for something meant to be shown public. Added
together, norwegians have a much "simpler" version of Disney movies than
americans! The only exception I have seen, was "The little mermaid", where
the norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø dubbed the little mermaid. And she is
from Bergen and was actually allowed to use her own dialect in the movie,
making it the most believable voice-over I have ever heard in a Disney
movie! (Note: I have not seen all the latest ones, so I'm not quite
up-to-date here!)

Beeing used to bokmål in almost all entertainment, norwegian kids very often
switch from their own dialect to bokmål when they play something that is
more or less a roleplay, like "Mother and father"! Some also tend to do this
when talking on the telephone.

The absolutely most disappointing movie dubbing I have seen so far, was the
quite recent Asterix movie with Gerard Depardieu. This would be the perfect
movie for letting the romans talk bokmål and the others "tribes" talk some
dialect (I think trøndersk would have been perfect for Asterix' village).
Instead everyone talked the same boring bokmål!

As for difficulties in using dialects because we don't understand each
other, I don't think that's a problem. It is true that I can go 30km from
home and listen to old people whom I don't understand (even if it's the same
dialect "group"). And there are swedish dialects closer to mine than other
norwegian dialects. But today mostly children speak the real dialect, grown
ups tend to speak a modified version which almost any norwegian would
understand, but still be able to characterize as the correct dialect. And
using these modified versions in e.g. Disney comics would add a lot to the
stories. But of course, introducing such an element now is probably going to
be extremely difficult...

And with that, I hereby declare that I will try to restrain myself from
further comments on this subject, without making any promises :-)

Knut Hunstad