I still sometimes think about the guy in my lower secondary school English class in probably 2016 reading the infobox on the Wikipedia article for Tanzania, and saying out loud, “Official languages: none de jure??”, pronouncing it in a heavy singsongy Norwegian accent like “NOO-nuh duh YEW-ruh??”, apparently believing “None De Jure” to be the name of some sort of obscure African language rather than just meaning “no official language”

And then I remember that this was around the same time that the teacher asked what New York was named after, and I raised my hand and answered “the Dork of York”. And then my soul goes nichijou_pencil_stab.mp4 for a bit

  • assyrian@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    9 months ago

    I’ve always thought Norwegian was basically German with English grammar - there are so many cognates with German. there was a time when I was learning German and Norwegian at the same time and I’d get mixed up so much. I will never remember which language uses ‘kan’ and which uses ‘kann’.