Norwegian letters Æ Ø Å

Learning the Norwegian alphabet is one of the things we already learn in our first Norwegian lesson. The last three Norwegian letters, Æ Ø and Å, are by far the greatest challenge. In the following article, you will learn how to pronounce them, how to write them by hand, and where to find them on a computer or phone keyboard.

Æ

As the letter looks like, it is a sound between the Polish “a” and “e”. What can I do to pronounce æ correctly? Simply place your tongue flat behind your lower teeth, smile, opening your mouth wide, and pronounce the sound between a and e. Learn to recognize the sound as æ is a personal pronoun in many dialects and means “I”! Like all Norwegian vowels, it has two variants: short and long vowel.

Short æ:
færre, nærmere, verre (pronounce the letter e in front of r as æ)
Long æ: lærer, bære, skjære

We can write it manually in two ways: as it looks on the keyboard, i.e. start with a and without lifting your hand add e (creating a butterfly), or like Ҩ, i.e. creating a loop. If we change the keyboard settings on the computer to Norwegian, the character æ lies two keys to the right of L, and on the phone under the expansion of the letter a. As a last resort, if we cannot create a Norwegian character, we can replace it with two letters: ae. Be careful though, this strategy can sometimes be confusing.

Ø

This is one of the most demanding Norwegian sounds. The sound ø is identical to German, Turkish, Swedish and Icelandic ö. To pronounce it, place your lips together to pronounce e, then, without changing the position of your tongue, round your mouth to pronounce o, and pronounce e. Try to pronounce ø in short and long variants:

Short ø: f ødt, sønn, nøtt
Long ø: d ør, søt, kø

It is a sound between the Polish o and e, which is why it was written similarly in the past: oe, and today we will write it in this way if we run out of Norwegian characters on the keyboard. On the Polish keyboard, after changing the language to Norwegian, you will find it one key to the right of L. However, on the telephone keyboard it is under the character extension o. lower left side.

Å

Did you know that in Norway there is (and more!) a place called Å? The last letter of the Norwegian alphabet is called “holy a” (that is, a with a halo or a circle). It is a sound similar to the Polish o, so to pronounce it, we place our lips in a pout and talk about.

Short å: brått, vått, åtte
Long å: få, båt, såp

Not so long ago, this letter was written with double a, i.e. AA and aa (this is also how we will replace the Norwegian character on the keyboard, if necessary). That is why many Norwegians still have a surname with a double a, for example the writer Jostein Gaarder (we read: gorder). On the keyboard you will find this sign one key to the right of P, while in the phone it is hidden under the letter a. When writing the letter å by hand, remember not to get into the habit of putting a dot over the å – it must be a circle. 🙂

Finally, we recommend a page where you can listen to the sounds of Norwegian letters, solo and in words. In addition, you can record your attempts to pronounce these sounds here and compare them with the voice of the teacher.

We hope you are not so foreign to these three Norwegian letters! How did you deal with the spelling and pronunciation of Æ Ø and Å?