All Nordic languages: not at all (word ordering)

A

Alxmrphi

Senior Member
NW England
UK English
Hi all,

Quick survey of the Nordic languages if you don't mind :D
To say "not at all" or one of its many synonyms, in Icelandic you say "alls ekki", where negation comes in the second position, but in Swedish the order is reversed (inte alls). How does it work in Norwegian, Danish, Faroese(?)? I was just interested if this was like an East/West split, but given the big connections between Danish and Norwegian, I wasn't sure if that affected anything.

Thanks
Alex
 
    • "Slet ikke" in Danish. Also, I think I remember reading some old (~100 years) Swedish text, which used "alls icke" (Google indicates that I'm not entirely wrong). So I think a more likely reason is simply that modern Swedish made a change that didn't propagate.
     
    hanne said:
    "Slet ikke" in Danish. Also, I think I remember reading some old (~100 years) Swedish text, which used "alls icke" (Google indicates that I'm not entirely wrong). So I think a more likely reason is simply that modern Swedish made a change that didn't propagate.
    Click to expand...
    Ah, that's really interesting!
    I thought Swedish had developed inte for a lot longer than that, but if icke was used (also in the what-now-appears-to-be normal order) around at least 100 years ago, then it looks like a fairly modern change.

    Edit: or not:
    Swedish
    Swedish has three negations, inte, icke, ej, all meaning ‘not’. Inte is the most commonly used negation in Swedish. Both icke and ej are restricted to formal written language, icke is also found in compounds, where neither inte nor ej may be used: icke-våld ‘non-violence. Other words with negative meanings are ingalunda ‘by no means’, knappt, knappast ‘hardly’, omöjligen ‘not possibly’.
    Click to expand...
     
    I'd just like to add that some Swedish dialects prefer/allow alls inte.

    (Also, do note the interesting relationship between analytic English, using a preposition in connection with all, and quite analytic Swedish, using an inflected, though rudimentary, form without preposition, but with inverted word order (compared to fairly inflectional Icelandic (and hence most likely also Old Swedish/Norse)). I believe this relationship can be related to the reversed word order of Swedish and English genitive clauses (and as such subsequently also to the fall of the true genitive and the rise of the enclitic possessive suffix).)
     
    I believe this relationship can be related to the reversed word order of Swedish and English genitive clauses (and as such subsequently also to the fall of the true genitive and the rise of the enclitic possessive suffix).)
    Click to expand...
    I don't get what you mean exactly.
    Can you explain it with an example? I'm not sure if you mean the alls inte or the inte alls version, too.
    English has two ways of forming genitives (suffix and PP), so I am not 100% sure how to interpret the quoted part.
     
    In standard Swedish, the natural choice would be "inte alls".
    "Den surströmmingen var inte alls dum".

    However, I would not say that it's grammatically incorrect to use "alls inte", perhaps just a bit more oldfashioned or a bit semi-quirky. Or dialectal. If I heard someone say it, I would not react that much.
     
    Alxmrphi said:
    Both icke and ej are restricted to formal written language, icke is also found in compounds, where neither inte nor ej may be used: icke-våld ‘non-violence.
    Click to expand...
    I wouldn't say that icke and ej are restricted to (formal) written language, especially not using the expression "icke sa nicke" for a no, or saying "det gick icke (alls)" when something/someone fails doing something.
     
    Ah, it was just something I saw on a Swedish grammar site, it wasn't me writing that as if it was my own opinion on it :)
    All the same, thanks for pointing that out. Now I know it's not 'exactly' true what they said.
     
    mosletha said:
    Well, Norwegian Bokmål is "ikke i det hele tatt" while Norwegian Nynorsk is "ikkje i det heile". :)
    Click to expand...
    Is this the shortest phrase in Norwegian? I'm trying to say something like "Their using English means they can use no Norwegian at all". Det at de bruker engelsk betyr at de kan bruke ingen norsk i det hele tatt seems to do the job, but also looks as though it ought to be shorter.

    The context is a discussion of the video that I asked about in a previous thread. (Unfortunately I forgot that YouTube links aren't allowed, so the thread has been deleted.) It's a Norwegian video but most of it is in fake Danish, and the rest in English. We're speculating about why the English parts aren't in Norwegian.
     
    timtfj said:
    Thanks! That's precisely what I was after. It's a phrase which I half know but haven't "officially" learnt yet. :) (That is, I've not yet got round to putting it in a list and memorising it.)
    Click to expand...

    No problem. Just repeating what TomTrussel wrote earlier.

    Here's my attempt at shortening: Det at de bruker engelsk betyr at de kan slett ikke bruke norsk
     
    The kan needs to come after slett ikke; beyond that the sentence is grammatically correct. I’m not sure how much sense it makes in Norwegian without more context to the sentence, as speaking in English is no guarantee the people speaking don’t also know Norwegian and is able to use the language well.
     
    vestfoldlilja said:
    The kan needs to come after slett ikke; beyond that the sentence is grammatically correct. I’m not sure how much sense it makes in Norwegian without more context to the sentence, as speaking in English is no guarantee the people speaking don’t also know Norwegian and is able to use the language well.
    Click to expand...
    Thanks for correcting---I recognise that as the standard change in order for a subordinate clause.

    The video was a Norwegian comedy sketch parodying the Danish language. The narrative parts of the sketch are in English, but the rest of it is in Danish-sounding gibberish (mostly containing no actual Danish words). I suggested to the person I was discussing it with that they'd chosen English rather than Norwegian in order to avoid introducing any real Danish words. It would also differentiate the languages nicely: nobody could think that the pseudo-Danish was meant to sound like mispronounced Norwegian, for example.

    I meant to type ingen dansk i det hele tatt or ingen skandinaviske ord i det hele tatt. The point was that using Norwegian would introduce some real words and thereby spoil the sketch.
     
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