10 Pronunciation

No pauses at all?

In earlier chapters we have underlined the importance of connected speech. In general Norwegian words are glued to each other so that one sound immediately follows the other as in:

In other cases a final /r/ sound merges with the following dental sound ( /t, d, n, l, s/) into a new sound /ʈ , ɖ , ɳ , ɭ , ʃ/ making a firm connection between the two words as in:

Are there no pauses in spoken Norwegian? Of course there are. In connected speech the pauses will occur where you find commas and full stops in a written text. There will also be stops when the speaker stops to think, is hesitating or rephrasing the utterance. But in general one can say that when you are speaking Norwegian, words should be closely connected with no intervening sounds or pauses.

By using connected speech and pauses correctly, you can make different patterns of the following five names and thus express whether you are talking about five, four or three persons.