What does “portør” mean in Norwegian?

Samtale om legejobb og portører på sykehus

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B1 Norwegian listening practice · Standard Norwegian · Picked for people who know some

💡 Did you know?
portør
Norwegian and Scandinavian word for hospital porter
The hospital staffer who wheels patients, beds, and samples through the corridors

Portør is the Norwegian word for a hospital porter, the staffer who wheels patients, beds, blood samples, and deceased bodies through hospital corridors. The word comes from French porteur (“carrier”) and is shared across Scandinavian: Danish portør, Swedish portör. It’s a real public-sector job with its own union and identity in Norway. Hospital porters know the building map by heart and often outlast the doctors and nurses on a given ward.

This clip is a doctor-and-nurse conversation about legejobb (“the doctor’s job”) and the portører who keep the hospital moving. The speakers tease that doctors should stop talking shop and notice the people who actually run the place. Norwegian hospital culture leans hard on this kind of cross-team respect.

From NRK↗ on YouTube.Watch original

How common are the words?

How common are the words in this B1 Norwegian listening practice video?

88.5%
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

83.6%
Top 1,000
88.5%
Top 2,000
91.8%
Top 5,000

How common in spoken Norwegian

89.3%
Top 1,000
98.2%
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 B1. Here is what they mean.

portøren
1×
Not in top 5,000
tommelen
3×
Not in top 5,000
tommel
1×
Not in top 5,000
thumb
æsj
1×
Not in top 5,000People say this a lot
yuck (disgust)
takt
1×
Top 5,000
sense of rhythm; tact

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

★Where you hear this
  • ▸In Norwegian medical dramas (Sykehuset, Atlantic Crossing)
  • ▸In Norwegian hospital-staff news on NRK and TV 2
  • ▸In Norwegian nurse-and-porter union content (Fagforbundet)
  • ▸In Norwegian emergency-room documentaries
  • ▸In Norwegian healthcare podcasts and patient stories

See Standard Norwegian Videos You Can Understand on Reelang

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