The n-Category Café

With all that dough, it’s amazing how Albert von Thurn und Taxis tries to save money by getting shaved at the local barber school.

Well he didn’t get to be that rich by spending money willy-nilly…

Yep, that’s another pair. “Skipper” is actually a borrowing from Dutch, but it derives from the same root as “ship.” Another Scandinavian example is “skeet” versus “shoot,” or “scuff(le)” versus “shove.”

English “church” ~ Norwegian “kirke”

In Old English, the sc combination was always pronounced “sh”; for example “bishop” was spelled biscop (cf. “episcopal”). Another example of the thing you’re after is “shale” and “scale”. I think there are loads of such examples.

What do you mean, “Norwegian kirke”? What happened to the Scottish?

Actually, whilst the Scot will go to a ‘kirk’, the Norwegian is pronounced much more like ‘shirke’ (though not quite; there are two (or maybe more!) different ‘sh’ sounds in Norwegian but the difference is quite subtle. It gets most confusing when comparing the word for twentyith: ‘tjuende’, “sho-endé”, with the word for seven: ‘sjuende’, “sho-endé”. Only they have different ‘sh’ sounds.) so the Norwegian is actually closer to the English than the Scottish.

I’ve been very pleased to discover that there is a secret to learning Norwegian. Just speak Geordie with a Welsh accent (though some words one has to modify it with a bit of Somerset). If you go to Newcastle or Trondheim and say:

“Jaɪ gʊəɹ jɛm”

(phonetics taken from the IPA chart on wikipedia, using the only proper English accent on the list).

Then both the Geordie and the Viking will understand you.

However, if you say (now using correct Norwegian spelling as the IPA took far too long to work out):

“Jeg liker lutefisk”

Then the Norwegian will understand what you mean and the Geordie will think you are completely barmy. I think the best explanation of how to eat it is this one.

As for more examples of Norwegian-English overlaps, try “kjøpe”. It means “buy”. Once you realise that the ‘kj’ sound is actually a ‘sh’ then it makes a lot more sense.

Also, the words for shirt and skirt are even closer in Norwegian than in English, being “skjorte” and “skjørt” respectively.

Andrew - who has to write an essay entitled “What I did on my holidays” for the first time in over tjue årer.

All spacecrafts and asteroids (NEA) that rendezvous with central gravity potentials, and that can be measured with high accuracy, in the solar sytem, shows that bit of accelaration anomaly. There are exceptions, for example, spacecrafts that use propellents for orbital fixing, like the voyagers. Hmm, I guess that’s my best shot :S .