Jens Skarkerud Haugan
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, NORWAY; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9708-2038
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36534/erlj.2025.01.01
Bibliographic citation: (ISSN 2657-9774) Educational Role of Language Journal. Volume 2025-1(13). ACTIONS IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION, pp. 6-23.
Abstract
This paper is a contribution to the 2025 topic of the Educational Role of Language Association (ERLA 2025a): Language in Actions – Actions in Language belonging to the ERL research scope Language(-)Activity that is addressed in project cycle 2 (ERLA 2025b). The linguistic “action” in focus in this paper is related to the (over)use of nouns derived from verbs and adjectives, and other heavy noun constructions in the two varieties of Norwegian written language, Bokmål and Nynorsk. This has been dubbed “noun disease” in textbooks and general language advice and is considered “bad” language, first of all in Nynorsk texts, but in principle also in Bokmål. The Language Council of Norway as the standardising authority is expected to be especially aware of the differences between the two written standards, and possibly also to be a linguistic role model. In this paper, we have investigated a few parallel texts, i.e. the same text in Bokmål and Nynorsk, published by the Language Council of Norway. While this is a small-scale project, it is strikingly clear that the Language Council has not made any attempt to alter the Nynorsk translations in the investigated texts other than following the standard for Nynorsk orthography and lexicon. The Nynorsk versions are word-for-word translations that follow the Bokmål version slavishly. There is no deviation from Bokmål in syntax or formulation that one would expect in idiomatic Nynorsk texts. While one may say that this is “good” from the perspective of guaranteeing the comparability of the texts as legal documents, one may say that this is “bad” from the aspect of respecting Nynorsk as a language different from Bokmål, with its own history and style, and respecting Nynorsk users’ right to read idiomatic and authentic Nynorsk texts instead of mediocre translations of Bokmål texts. From a teaching and learning perspective, the use of administrative texts is limited. One may learn differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk in orthography and choice of words (lexicon), but the Nynorsk translations investigated here are not what one traditionally would consider authentic or “good” Nynorsk as described in textbooks about Nynorsk.
Keywords: good vs. bad language, language didactics, linguistic comparability, noun disease, noun expressions, Nynorsk as an alternative written language, Nynorsk style, substantivisation, translation, verbal actions, verbal expressions, verbal nouns
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