Trøndersk

Trøndersk or Trøndelag Norwegian (Bokmål: trøndersk, trøndermål; Nynorsk: trøndersk, trøndsk; Trøndersk: trønder, trønder-dialekt) is a Norwegian dialect, or rather a group of several more or less distinct sub-dialects. As it is the case with all Norwegian dialects, it has no standard orthography, and its users write either Bokmål or, in the case of 0.6%,^[1] Nynorsk.

It is spoken in the region Trøndelag, the district Nordmøre and the municipality Bindal in Norway as well as in Frostviken in northern Jämtland, Sweden, which was colonized in the 18th century by settlers from Nord-Trøndelag and transferred to Sweden as late as 1751. The dialect is, among other things, perhaps mostly characterized by the use of apocope, palatalization and the use of retroflex flaps (thick L). Historically it also applied to contiguous regions of Jämtland and Härjedalen (which sometimes but rarely are referred to as "Øst-Trøndelag" by locals and Norwegians).

The word trøndersk is an adjective describing a Trønder (a person from Trøndelag) or anything coming from or relating to Trøndelag (including the dialect).

Some of the more conspicuous variations of these dialects of Norwegian, in addition to the aforementioned apocope and palatalization, are that most of the personal pronouns are pronounced differently than in Standard Norwegian, e.g. Trondheim dialect: 1st person singular nominative /æː/, commonly rendered as "æ" (Standard Norwegian "eg" (Nynorsk) / "jeg" (Bokmål)), or 2nd person plural accusative /dɔkː/ or /dɔkːɛr/, commonly spelled "dokker" or "dåkker" (Standard Norwegian "dykk" (Nynorsk) / "dere" (Bokmål)). Variation among personal pronouns are common in most Norwegian dialects.

The sub-dialects of Trøndersk which are the furthest from Standard Norwegian are found in the region Innherred; notably in Verdal and Skogn. Here the everyday language bears some resemblance to Swedish, Icelandic and Old Norse. However, urbanisation, globalisation, immigration and Americanisation are serious threats to Trøndersk with its sub-dialects, as well as to other languages/dialects/sub-dialects (and generally to local and regional cultures all over the world). Many people (among them locals) are concerned that this leads to less diversity and makes it steadily harder to decide where people come from based on their discourse. A side effect of this degradation of dialects is that one might guess the speaker's age from his or her dialect.

Phonology

The Meldal subdialect has a very original realization of /iː/, which is a syllabic, palatalized frictionless dental approximant [ð̩ʲ˕ː]. This sound is also found in some dialects of Swedish.^[2][3]

In the subdialect of the traditional district of Namdalen, Old Norse /aː/ is often realized as a wide diphthong [ɑu]. This is also the case in the interior dialect Sogn, as well as in Jamtlandic, the dialect of Voss, and the Icelandic language.

See also

• Jamtlandic dialects

References

Bibliography