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Nynorn in general, Shetland Mainland and Foula&Westside Nynorn
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Faroese vs. Nynorn

Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:32 am

What are the main differences between modern Faroese and Nynorn?

Or more specifically, if automatic translation was created from Faroese to Nynorn, what kind of things would have to be taken into consideration?

Different orthography would cause no problems, but what are the main grammatical differences? Are there any specific problems in the vocabulary?

Re: Faroese vs. Nynorn

Wed Mar 11, 2015 2:01 pm

It depends on what Nynorn we are referring to. Shetland Nynorn has pretty much the same grammatical system as Faroese while that of Orkney Nynorn is closer to Norwegian with very little (or dialectal?) use of case inflection.

The question is not easy to answer, however, as Nynorn is still in its construction stage.

Re: Faroese vs. Nynorn

Wed Mar 11, 2015 4:12 pm

Alright, so if the idiomatic expression is going to be rather similar as in Faroese vs. Norwegian it would be possible to create texts through automatic translation.

I see there's only one dictionary. Are Orkney and Shetland Nynorn going to use the same dictionary?

Re: Faroese vs. Nynorn

Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:51 am

I suppose it would but we would have to finish the dictionary first.

Not at all, the phonological development from Old Norse was different in Orkney and in Shetland, so was the grammar from what we know. Although the two language were close and there may have been a certain degree of interintelligibility, the differences between them are important enough to justify separate dictionaries but the work has been focused on the Shetland one and there is still no satisfactory/set orthography for Orkney Nynorn.

Re: Faroese vs. Nynorn

Tue Mar 31, 2015 8:31 pm

There are certainly differences between Nynorn and Faroese:

1. Nynorn is a monophtongized language, while Faroese is full of diphtongs;
2. Faroese (especially the colloquial form) has indefinite article, Nynorn is free of it;
3. Nynorn has genitive, which is almost died out in Faroese.
4. Faroese is West Scandinavian language, Nynorn shares also some East Scandinavian features:
http://nornlanguage.x10.mx/index.php?general#class

There might be a few points more, but we first have to wait until the grammar of Nynorn and its reading rules are finalized.

An automatic translation from Faroese into Nynorn might do the job in 80%-90% cases, but there may be harder cases, when Nynorn uses idioms (and there's quite a many in Jakobsen's dictionary, mostly in their Anglicised form present in the Shetland dialect of the late 1800's).

Yes, we plan to do more or less the same dictionary for Shetland and Orkney Nynorn, with just a few regional lexical differences whenever they still can be found:
Ork. soind 'to die slowly' - Shet. soind 'to show', Ork. skrift 'lean, hard-grown' - Shet. skrift 'crack, fissure', Ork. lerblade 'cormorant' - Shet. lorin 'cormorant'

Piechjo, are you specifically interested in automatic translation?

Re: Faroese vs. Nynorn

Thu Apr 16, 2015 5:47 am

Thanks for the information!

Yes, I am interested in trying out an automatic translation project if I find the time for it. I'm still a novice though.
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