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Kategori: .ENTRIES IN ENGLISH

  • Sámi loanwords in Norwegian

     6th of february is the national day of the Sámi, and on this occasion I’m looking at Sámi words that have been loaned into Norwegian.

    Sami people. Karasjok. Eckersberg 1852 (from Wikipedia)
    Sami people. Karasjok. Eckersberg 1852 (from Wikipedia)

    There has been contact between Sámi and Norwegians for thousands of years. Being the minority language, there are many loanwords in Sámi from Norwegian. But what about the other way round? There are a few words that have been taken up in Norwegian. There is also influence from Sámi on the Northern dialects of Norwegian, something I don’t go into here.

    Sámi loanwords

    Språkrådet (the Norwegian Language Council) has an article listing loanwords from Sámi. Here are known words loaned from Sámi into Norwegian:

    • joik – a traditional form of song in Sámi culture. In Northern Sámi the song is actually called luohti, and the act of singing is juoigat
    • kommag – shoes made from reindeer leather, from gáma, plural gápmagat
    • lavvo – the tent used by nomadic Sámi, from lávvu
    • tundra – also used in English, a type of arctic landscape, it comes to us through Russian from a Sami language on the Kola peninsula in Russia, from tūndar in Kildin Sámi
    • pulk – in Norwegian this means «an enclosed sled pulled by a skier», while originally in Sámi this meant a sled pulled by reindeer
    • pesk – a fur coat, from Sámi beaska
    • noaide – a shaman who could come in contact with the spirits
    • stallo – an evil spirit, in Sámi stállu

    Sámi cuisine

    In addition to these loanwords that are mentioned in many Norwegian articles, there is one more that is in regular use in Norwegian:

    • Bidos – a dish with reindeer meat, vegetables and potatoes.

    Something foxy

    This article mentions that the word for fox in Norwegian, «rev», could have come from Sámi. The argument is that Norwegians would buy fox pelt from the Sámi. In that case it must have been loaned already into Old Norse. In Old Norse it was refr. In Finnish (a related language) it’s repo, and in Sámi rieban.

    It seems likely as the word doesn’t appear in other Germanic languages: the English fox, German Fuchs, and Dutch Vos, all similar to each other, is clearly another word. This article discusses the etymologi of refr and fox at length. It mentions that there was also the word fóa in Old Norse, and that the Gothic for fox was fauho – both similar to fox.

    So I put the word «rev» on the list:

    • rev – rieban in Northern Sámi

    Sámi names on the map

    In addition, there are a lot of Sámi toponyms, place names, in Northern Norway. Some examples:

    • The town Karasjok, after Sámi Kárášjohka, where johka means river.
    • The village Skáidi, which is a Sámi word for «land between two rivers that are merging»
    • The place Hjemmeluft, a Norwegian variant of the original Sámi Jiemmaluovta (Northern Sámi Jiepmaluokta) where luokta means bay). This one is funny as luft means «air» in Norwegian.
    • Many place names ending with –várri (mountain) and –jávri (lake)

    Sources

  • Talk about yourself: How to say «I» in Norwegian

     Norwegian has a lot of dialectal variation, and one way this is particulary apparent is in the many variants that exist for the pronoun «I». This word has 13 variants in Norwegian: æ, æg, æi, æig, eig, eg, e, i, ei, jæi, jæ, je, and jei.

    And yes, you’ll hear (most) of these variants when you travel around Norway!

    Why so many variants

    So what’s the reason for all these variants? I think there are two reasons:

    1. Dialects are cool in Norway! We don’t speak a national standard variety, but are proud of speaking our dialects
    2. Norwegian dialects originate from both Old West Norse and Old East Norse, or to say it another way: the boundary between those Old Norse variants divides present-day Norway. The mountain range dividing Norway in east and west has also divided the dialects into two main varieties.

    Other languages in Europe

    Other languages in Europe also have dialectal variants for the word «I», notably German, sporting about 7 variants: ich, ech, aich, äich, isch, i, and ick.

    Swedish has 4: jag, ja, jau, and jå.

    Old Norse 

    The Old Norse form was ek, inherited from Proto-Germanic *ek. Old East Norse developed iak, and this became Danish and Norwegian jeg, and the Swedish jag.

    The change to iak followed a regular sound change in Old East Norse. But I think it’s interesting that the Proto-Slavic pronoun had a similar change: *(j)ãzъ which developed from Proto-Baltic-Slavic *ēź-, adding an initial «j». So most of the Slavic languages today have ja which (coincidentally?) is the same as the Swedish form ja. A coincidence? Maybe Old East Norse people had contact with the Slavic people and they influenced each other?

    The 5 main dialectal areas in Norway

    So the dialects in Norway fall into either the Western or the Eastern main «buckets» – they developed the pronoun from either Old West Norse (ek) or Old East Norse (iak). In addition we can separate out the Northern dialects that are quite distinct from the other Western variants because of the geographical distance. We have the Trønder dialect, which is in the middle of Norway where these three main variants meet. We also have the Southern dialects on the coast from Risør to Lindesnes, with influence from east and west and also from Danish.

    Map of personal pronouns in Norway

    SNL.no: Skjekkeland 2015 / Christiansen 1969 Lisens: CC BY SA 3.0

    Northern dialects

    Most common is æ, but other variants include e, eg, æ, æg, je, ei

    Northern dialects are part of the Old West Norse tradition, but the two last forms originated in eastern dialects that were brought to the area by immigration.

    Trønder

    Most common is æ. Other variants: æ, æg, æi, æig, eig.

    Western dialects

    Most common is eg, but also e and i.

    Eastern dialects

    Most common is jæi. Other variants: je, jæ, e

    Generally the Western dialects begin with a vowel, and the Eastern ones begin with the consonant «j». For instance East Norwegian dialects north of Oslo is je, dropping the last letter, but keeping the initial «j». This is also similar to the Swedish pronoun which is usually either jag or ja.

    Southern dialects

    æ(g) or e(g), and in this case being a variant of the western dialects.

    Conclusion

    All the dialect variants generally fall into either the Old West Norse tradition or the Old East Norse one. It’s interesting that the common western dialect pronoun is (almost) the same as the Proto Indoeuropean form *éǵh.

    The only other languages that have preserved the original eg are Faroese and Icelandic.

    Sources: