How do you say “I” in Norwegian dialects?

Jeg på norske dialekter: Oslo til Molde

A1 · BeginnerWestern Norwegian⏱ 37s🚶 Medium speed
WhatsAppGmailTelegramEmail

A1 Norwegian listening practice · Western Norwegian · Picked for people who know a little

💡 Did you know?
jeg, eg, æ
Norwegian dialect pronoun
“I” in Norwegian: jeg in Bokmål, eg in Nynorsk, and æ, e, ei or i out loud

Norwegian has two written standards and no single spoken one, and the word for “I” shows it. Bokmål writes jeg, Nynorsk writes eg, and out loud you’ll also hear æ, e, ei or i, depending on where the speaker grew up. All of them are correct Norwegian. People keep their dialect at school, at work and on TV, so a learner meets several of these from the start.

This clip runs through them town by town: Jeg kommer fra Oslo, Æ kommer fra Kristiansand, Ek kommer fra Stavanger, Eg kommer fra Haugesund, E kommer fra Ålesund, Ei kommer fra Ørsta, I kommer fra Molde. The last speaker, from Brekstad, says Æg kjæm fra Brekstad: the verb changes too, kommer becomes kjæm. A good order to learn them: jeg (Oslo and the east, and the Bokmål spelling), eg (much of the west, and the Nynorsk spelling) and æ (Trøndelag and the north). Once those three sound familiar, the other forms are easy to place.

How common are the words?

How common are the words in this A1 Norwegian listening practice video?

84.5%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Norwegian words
Most of the words in this video are common Norwegian words.

How common in written Norwegian

74.1%
Top 1,000
84.5%
Top 2,000
93.1%
Top 5,000

How common in spoken Norwegian

90.7%
Top 1,000
97.7%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000
👄 Words for talking
This video uses words people often say in Norwegian.

Harder words in this video

These words are harder than A1. Here is what they mean.

kjæm
1×
Not in top 5,000
come (dialect)

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.

See Western Norwegian Videos You Can Understand on Reelang

Open Norwegian page