The open letter series will be a collection of open letters written to other people, ideas or activities that have taken place over the course of the last few days of uploading in both the public realm and in my personal life. What exactly is an open letter? An open letter is a letter which is often critical in nature that is addressed to a particular person or group of people but intended for publication or to be read by a large group of people. In this case, that is you, the reader.

Each open letter will discuss a different topic, in varying degrees of depth. From politics to personal issues, the Open Letter series aims to provide clarity on issues, create ideas or inspiration, or, in my case, to become a place of stress and thought relief. Nothing is safe from receiving an open letter, not telly shows or book characters, a class lesson or a provoking idea.

And so it continues: The Open Letter Series

An open letter to Norwegian,

Dear Norwegian,

You’re a handful.

Not in a “I’m too lazy to learn grammar” type of way. I’m never too lazy to learn the grammar of any language, to be honest. If you’re older than 12 and understand what grammar is, I’d recommend that’s how you start.

The thing about Norwegian is that you’re not pronouncing half of the words that you write. Take “unnskyld” for example. It means “sorry”, pronounced like “un-shill-ni” and doesn’t sound at all like the German word for “sorry” (enschuldingung, pronounced “ent-shul-deh-gung”), the language that Norwegian is supposedly based on.

I understand that hundreds of years of separation on an island that is not connected to Germany might mean that the language would change from speaker to speaker, constantly undergoing alterations and things like until it’s shaped into the confusing cluster-fuck that is the modern Norwegian language.

I shouldn’t be complaining. English is complicated; English meme culture is difficult to understand and there are so many ways that English can be warped to the extent that you’re saying the exact same thing but they mean different things depending on context. Sounds are inconsistent, they depend entirely on surrounding letters, it’s far too complicated for its own good.

Take this poem which has made its rounds on the internet:

“Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind…”

And it’s all true. Native English speakers who are constantly exposed to this strangeness become used to sounds not sounding the same, for things to be constantly changing and never having to think about what they should say next.

Kudos to Norwegian though, because of your European roots, you allow for more creative and contemplative thought, you say more with less words and allow your speakers to express their feelings using a variety of different words. In English it’s hard to express oneself the way that you really want to directly.

English speakers must use analogies and similes and things like that in order to express their emotions. In Norwegian, you can å være sint with whoever you want to, without describing how angry you are using ‘as a’ or ‘like a’, because Norwegians get it. You’re angry. Oops.

So, Norwegian, it’ll take some getting used to, but I promise I will be able to read and understand you entirely by the time I turn 25.

Maybe.

I’ll work on my spelling and pronunciation; you work on your simplicity.

And English….

We’ll get to you later.

Best wishes,

Johanna