Saltenmål EPQ Research
Introduction -
Saltenmål is the group of dialects originating from the Salten District of the Norwegian County of Nordland.
The biggest municipality in Salten is Bodø, but among the others are Fauske, Saltdal, Steigen, and Hamarøy, to name a few.
Salten has an interesting dialect, although certain aspects are fairly typical to other northern Norwegian dialects.
Phonology -
The apocope is a phonological element that involves the loss of a final sound of a word, when
spoken. Commonly, this is usually a vowel, but can include consonants. This happens commonly
in English, mostly as native English speakers do not pronounce the -e- on the end of words,
for example, in words like ‘come’ and ‘more’.
Saltenmål is one of a number of northern dialects that use apocope, but it is used much more
often than in other areas. Words that are usually pronounced with two syllables in Norwegian
are often shortened to one in Saltenmål. For example, infinitive verbs never have a vowel on the
end, which deviates from both Bokmål and Nynorsk:
å tenkja (to think) -> å tænk’
å kjøpa (to buy) -> å kjøp’
å rekkja (to raise) -> å rækk
Using this rule then, it is possible to construct sentences in Saltenmål by removing certain letters
from the ends of words, following the apocope rule:
Bokmål: det er veldig viktig å spise mat, fordi du trenger det for å leve
Nynorsk: det er veldig viktig å eta mat, for di du treng det for å leva
Saltenmål: da e vældi vekti å et’ mat, førr di du træng da førr å levv
As you can see, lots of words drop syllables and letters. Note how ‘veldig’ and ‘viktig’ drop the
-g- at the end. This is common throughout Norway, but look at the vowel shifts:
Veldig (very) -> Vældi
Viktig (important) -> Vekti
A common trait of Salten phonology is the shift of e->æ. This is only the short form of the -e- vowel,
and can be seen in a number of words:
Trenger (need) -> Træng
Tenkte (thought) -> Tænkt’
Eg har spela (nynorsk: I have played) -> E har spæla
Now that we have an understanding of how apocope works, let’s look at some traditional aspects
of the dialect. In Nynorsk, the verb ‘å sola’ and the noun ‘ei sol’ are easy to distinguish because of
the vowel at the end of ‘å sola’. In Saltenmål, the words would, in theory, be ‘å sol’ and ‘ei sol’,
because of the apocope, but to distinguish and show that there was a vowel at the end of the word,
there is a different tone in ‘å sôl’ called the circumflex tone. I have used a diacritic called an ogonek
to show this. This is an aspect of the dialect which is slowly dying out, and young people are saying
them less traditionally. Here are some examples of the modern form, compared to the traditional form
below:
yr. å lage (to make) = tr. å lag’
yr. ei g̨ente (a girl) = tr. ei g̨en̨t̨’
yr. mange greine (many branches) = tr. mang’ grein’
As you can see, the traditional apocope is being lost, and so there is no longer a need for the circumflex
tone. You may also notice the ogoneks applied to certain consonants. Traditionally, after a frontal
vowel (i, y, ø, æ, e), the velar consonants are palatised, and so the diacritics represent that. For example:
da g̨el̨l̨ (it applies) -> det gjeld
da gal̨t̨ (it mattered) -> det galdt
This also occurs with traditional long consonants in the middle of a word:
Old Norse: ll/ld > Saltenmål: l̨l̨
Old Norse: nn/nd > Saltenmål: n̨n̨
Old Norse: dd > Saltenmål: d̨d̨
So, if we go back to ei g̨en̨t̨’ (a girl), we can break it down, and see why it is palatised!
We take Old Norse ‘genta’, and using the frontal vowel rule, we palatise the -g-:
Old Norse ‘ge’ -> ‘g̨e’
Then, we apply the long consonant rule:
Old Norse ‘nt’ -> ‘n̨t̨’
Finally, we apply the apocope, which just involves getting rid of the ending vowel:
Old Norse ‘genta’ -> ei g̨en̨t̨’
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