China Droll

When I was walking Piles this morning on the South Lantau Road, I came across a sign saying Road Works. Now, I’m sure you native English speakers out there would read this in your heads as “roadworks”, i.e. work that is being done to a road. But for me, a Norwegian, it looks like it’s the road doing the work. As in “this road works really hard”, or ” this road and my socks, that really works!

I think two separately written words should be uttered as two separate words. And thinking about this, I was reminded by a comment made by good old Fumier, in an earlier entry about the inflation in the word passionate, as in “passionate solutions”. He asked me if we have similar language transgressions in Norwegian.
And yes, we do. The biggest threat to the Norwegian language today is English. Like Cantonese, the Norwegian language has a word for everything, and yet the young people of today choose to use English words, with Norwegian pronunciation, where Norwegian would be both more than adequate and more fitting.

Norwegians have, for example, chosen to embrace the expression “from day one” (Fra dag en) instead of “from the first moment” which we used to say. There is no “day one” in Norwegian. Another glaring transgression is the direct translation of “a shock of hair.” In English it means “very thick hair” but translated directly into Norwegian, a custom which all editors of modern Norwegian books seem to let slide, it becomes “et sjokk av hÃ¥r” which means an electric shock or a trauma, of hair.

But the worst part of the Anglification of the Norwegian language is word separation; the habit of writing compund words (like road works) as two words. In Norway we used to have a good grammatical rule: If the word is uttered in one output of breath (roadworks) it should be written as one word.

Now I know many English speakers laugh their (your) heads off at interminable compund words (compoundwords) in German, to which Norwegian is quite similar. Norwegian is probably half English, half German, but without the ridiculous capital letters for everything - in German at least only proper nouns have capital letters, but how about “to Google”? “the Islamification of the world”?

Anyway, in Norwegian, “road works” and “roadworks” are two different things. Word separation is there to clarify meanings. Like “aircon” and “air con” (making air cooler, as opposed to being cheated by air.)

There is a movement in Norway called Astronomer mot orddeling (astronomers against word separation) which is gaining ground. You will see why. Let’s take the word “pineapple rings.” Even in English that is ambiguous. In proper Norwegian (an adjective by the way, why the capital letter?): Ananasringer. Pineapple cut into rings. But with the new writing style (writingstyle) it becomes: Pineapple makes a phone call.

Then there’s “sugar lumps” - sukkerbiter, or in new parlance “sukker biter” which means “sugar bites.” Astronomers against word separation has a slew of examples of this, what they call aggressive foodstuffs. Sugar bites, chicken bites, even trees bite, according to these new Norwegian mad word separators.

There’s also Krabbe Klør (crab claws) which should be written “krabbeklør,” otherwise it becomes: “Crab Itches.”
Only a dash will do to keep a word from being obscene; a particularly nasty example is PC pult i lønn (should be PC-pult i lønn, which means PC desk made of … linden? some kind of wood,) but without the dash becomes “PC fucked in secret.”

You see where I’m going with this? English is all well and good, but it should be kept as English, not translated directly into other languages with its sometimes (often) insane grammar and syntax intact.

Røyking Forbudt! it says, or should say everywhere in Norway, as it means “Smoking Forbidden”. But even this one word, forbudt, which has never even been a compound word, these “New Norwegians” (the SMS generation) have managed to make Røyking For Budt! which means “smoking for (someone apparently called) Budt. An Indian perhaps? Nobody else is allowed to smoke, that’s for sure.

And the lame thighs? It should be LammelÃ¥r! (Thighs of lamb) not Lamme LÃ¥r (lame thighs)!!! The same goes for Lame Hearts and Lame Brains. But perhaps the latter isn’t so wrong after all. Certainly, Lame Brains are ruling the world today, whether it is in Norwegian, English or the lamest of lame brains, those of the Hong Kong government. And if you think (”feel “) I should spell “government” with a capital g, I say: Let the fcukers deserve a capital g first.