Heddis,
At least six of my colleagues have Norwegian ancestry that I am aware of. I was speaking with one of them recently, a beautiful young nursing student named Berit, about her departure from Senja, Norway about ten years ago. She told me that her mother forbad her to speak nynorsk after their leaving Senja, implying that the dialect would impede her development. The actual term that Berit’s mother used for the dialect’s perceived insufficiencies were far more derogatory. It appears that Berit now has little left of her Norwegian background except for her beauty, her name and a promise to make bløtkake.
I am curious about the divisions and subdivisions of nynorsk which seem resilient to adaptation perhaps because of geographical isolation with its inherent, inbred perceptions and defenses. I also know what isolating, sunless arctic winters can do to a person, having experienced two of them and having not quite recovered from them. Is nynorsk a dialect? I aspire only to an Oslo-intonation and vocabulary. What does it mean when someone from Bergen declares, “I am not from Norway, I am from Bergen?” How incremental are the divisions of identification there? A micro-universe is alien to me. Hopefully there is not a difficult Trondheim dialect, home to my stubborn and blunt ancestors. Expressions on vikjavev are rich despite their lack of Latin roots which makes English so varied. This perception is, however, ethno-centric thus distorted. I notice a magnificent imagination which is extremely attractive. Who needs a Renaissance or an Enlightenment anyway? I catalogue the insults, juxtaposing them with those that I experienced in France which, as we all know, have their own character and provincialism.
Generally, colloquialism here is that which is spoken usually without vocabulary having Latin roots. Of course all of it, including Norwegian, is rooted in India or is that too much of a stretch? The Indo-European base is profound.
I was unaware that your question about the term “sad ass” was purely rhetorical and that you did not expect an answer. Where I come from, usually if you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer. Incidentally, check around. My response may be readily verified. J.
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