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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

How Norway’s government is failing Nynorsk

The Norwegian government is falling well short of the Norwegian Language Council’s requirements for the use of Nynorsk, the lesser-used of the Nordic country’s two national languages.

Published: 31 July 2017 14:18 CEST
How Norway’s government is failing Nynorsk
Although the use of Nynorsk has declined under PM Erna Solberg, her office is far and away the best at using it in official communications. Photo: Marit Hommedal / NTB scanpix
According to a report from broadcaster NRK, the percentage of official parliamentary documents that are issued in Nynorsk has dropped dramatically under the administration of Prime Minister Erna Solberg. 
 
In 2012, 26.3 percent of parliamentary documents were in Nynorsk, or New Norwegian. Four years later, the proportion had declined to just 16.8 percent.
 
The Norwegian Language Council (Språkrådet) requires 25 percent of all government documents to be in Nynorsk. The Council looks at four categories of government communications: parliamentary documents, social media, documents shorter than ten pages and documents longer than ten pages. 
 
The Council said that just three governmental departments are meeting the 25 percent target. The worst offenders are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which only used Nynorsk 2.3 percent of the time, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which used it just five percent of the time. 
 
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it took the criticism to heart and would develop a strategy to increase its use of Nynorsk. 
 
“We can see, for example, that more parliamentary documents should be in Nynorsk,” the ministry’s communications adviser, Marte Lerberg Kopstad, said in a written statement to NRK. The statement, it should be noted, was issued in Nynorsk. 
 
Just two members of the cabinet use Nynorsk as their primary language: Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Søviknes and Minister of Agriculture and Food Jon Georg Dale (Frp).
 
Although the use of Nynorsk has fallen on Solberg’s watch, her office is far and away the best at using the language to get its message across. The Prime Minister's office issued 33.5 percent of its communications in Nynorsk, according to the Council report. 
 
Language Council spokeswoman Kristin Solbjør said that the limited use of Nynorsk is unlikely to be a result of any “ill will”. 
 
“But in everyday life, it may be just be easy to forget to use the second language,” she told NRK. 
 
Nynorsk was developed in the 19th century and is still the less widely used of the two national tongues. A written alternative to Bokmål, the majority language, Nynorsk has also recently lost ground as the language used in schools. 
 
Around 12 percent of Norwegians, predominantly on the west coast around Bergen, speak Nynorsk and as of 2013, 26 percent of the country's 114 municipalities had declared Nynorsk their official language. 
 
Although it is the lesser used of the two, Nynorsk has enjoyed equal status with Bokmål since 1885.

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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