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Hi there, my name is Paul from Oslo, Norway And today I'm going to teach you the three most important letters in the Norwegian alphabet
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If you want to sound like a loco when you're in Norway
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You really should master these three vowels But first some history The Latin alphabet was introduced to Norway around the year
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Before that we had the runic alphabet which the Vikings used to express themselves
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The Latin alphabet has 26 letters however in Norwegian we have more vowels than in Latin
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So we needed a few extra letters to be able to pronounce our sounds
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Therefore in the Middle Ages the a and the e were added to our alphabet but it wasn't until 1917 that we took the letter o
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into our alphabet. Now that brings me to the good news because if you learn these three letters, you can also use them in Sweden and Denmark
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But even though the letters look the same in Danish and Norwegian two of them look a little bit different in Swedish However they pronounced same way Ah e oh
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Just listen to my Danish and Swedish friend. E, u, oh. You might think that these sounds are difficult to pronounce, but actually, if you're
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an English speaker you already have these sounds in your vocabulary. Let's start with the
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a. The a is kind of like an a and an e sort of pushed together. Now let's look at some
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examples in the English vocabulary like arrow or ant or ally. You can hear the a
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the ah sound in the beginning of the word there. The a is used in many Norwegian words. For example, in
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ahli, which means honest, or in wair, which is to be, or in ha, which means what, which is what
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Norwegians often say when they don catch a phrase for example they would say ha What Next letter is u which is the o with the slash through it
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For many, this is the most difficult one to pronounce. But remember that when you pronounce the o, you make the sound at the back of your mouth and not the front
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If you try to make the sound with the front of your mouth, it sounds like ooh
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but if you make it with the back of your mouth you get the u
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Some English words where you can hear the o sound is for example early or pearl or girl
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In Norwegian you can find it in oi which means island or you can find it in mu which is what the cow says in Norway
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or you can also find it in smur which means butter. The next letter is the o which is an a with a dot over or a circle
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Same letter as in my name, Paul. Up until 1917 the o was written
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AA so my name Paul was written Paul This was not always very convenient because in some words you would have three A after each other
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However, during the 1800s, the O, the A with the circle over, started to become more and more popular
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For example, the famous playwriter Henrik Ipsen started to use the O already in the late 1800s
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You find the o sound in the English vocabulary. You can for example take the word already or over or open
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There are many words in Norwegian that uses o. For example, ho, which means here, or oh, which means oh
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Or you can just use the letter o as it is, which actually means river
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And there are actually six places in Norwe. that I just called O
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That's all I had for now. And since this is the first video of the year, I just want to say the following
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I want to say, I want to learn to say, happy new year
