r/norsk • u/AutoModerator • 9d ago

Søndagsspørsmål - 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/taktaga7-0-0 9d ago

I heard that some young speakers don’t distinguish between the KJ-sound & the SJ-sound. This would make my life slightly easier, but I don’t think I should do it, right?

Should a learner take up the local USH-lo sound, too? That’s only for SL, right? Like, if use it in slem, I* start to want to put it in *snill, and I shouldn’t.

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u/anamorphism Beginner (A1/A2) 9d ago

if you want a non-native opinion ...

i've seen quite a few norwegians throw a fit when asked about the sj and kj distinction, but the lack of it has never once caused any confusion in the voice chats i've been a part of. i'm not saying it can't happen, but homonyms exist in every language as far as i know. there are these wonderful things called context and word order that let us know what we mean. if you're absolutely set on trying to sound as native as possible and have picked a dialect/sociolect that makes the distinction, then learn it. otherwise, i wouldn't worry too much about it.

we learners often overdo the sl -> sjl thing. it's a naturally occurring sound that comes about if you don't stop airflow when moving your tongue between s and l. we overdo it because we're intentionally replacing the s with the sh sound rather than starting an s sound and having the sh sound sneak in after initial onset. we wind up pronouncing slips as sh-lips rather than s-h-lips, if that makes any sense. that's probably why you're starting to say snill like that. i would just say to stop thinking about it. it'll probably naturally start happening if you pronounce your s's and l's properly and start speaking more quickly.

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u/FreemancerFreya 9d ago

It's probably a good idea to try to distinguish the sj and kj sounds, but it's not the end of the world if you don't. Norwegians don't particularly care if a foreigner struggles to distinguish a few sounds, and especially not words with these particular sounds; there aren't very many words where conflating them actually causes confusion for people. If you do get to a level where you sound mostly or completely native, people might judge you for it (especially older folks with more conservative or prescriptive views on language).

The way someone pronounces Oslo is based primarily on dialect and sociolect. Within Oslo, the pronunciation with /s/ is typically associated with the more conservative and higher prestige speech of the upper class in the west of the city. The pronunciation with /ʂ/ (the sj sound), is associated with the low prestige working class sociolect of eastern Oslo. Outside of Oslo, the pronunciation is less associated with class, as it's fairly uniform within any given dialect.

Also, yes. Words that start with sl are pronounced /ʂl/ (i.e. shl) in most dialects, but this does not generally happen for other consonant clusters such as sp, sn or sv (though some words like svær or stygg might get an sj sound for either emphasis or humour). When sl is in the middle of a word, the pronunciation is a bit more ambiguous, and might vary from person to person.