r/norsk • u/dwchandler • Jul 15 '18

Søndagsspørsmål #236 - Sunday Question Thread

This is a weekly post to ask any question that you may not have felt deserved its own post, or have been hesitating to ask for whatever reason. No question too small or silly!

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u/Akihiko95 Jul 16 '18

Yeah many dudes on the net suggest to pronounce it like an "e" while rounding your lips as much as you can (kind of like the way you round your lips when you pronounce the English word "boot"). I would like to know if this is the right way to pronounce it from a native speaker of the language tough.

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u/RoomRocket Native Speaker Jul 17 '18

English vowels are a mess and makes it very hard to phonetically spell things out.

I'll try to give some examples where I type out English words with a sound close to "ø" how they would be spelled phonetically in Norwegian which might help a bit.

Earl - ørl

Work - vørk

Cunning - kønning

Gun - gønn

Bird - børd

Burn - børn

In French ø is written "eu", and German "ö".

O, å, u and y are difficult as they don't have easily recognized equivalents.

When to say o and å I don't know any rules and I sadly don't have time to look one up

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u/Eberon Jul 18 '18

Cunning - kønning
Gun - gønn

Those are both [ʌ], an open /a/, like in sun or cut.

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u/RoomRocket Native Speaker Jul 18 '18

Yeah, but if you start to pronounce them with ø you will get an Authentic™ Norwegian accent :D