''Typisk norsk'' (''Typical Norwegian'') is a news and magazine program about language and communication produced by Dropout Productions (seasons 1 and 2) and Rubicon TV (season 3) for
NRK
NRK, an abbreviation of the Norwegian ''Norsk Rikskringkasting AS'', generally expressed in English as the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, is the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, and the largest ...
. Three seasons of the program were produced (2004, 2005, and 2006). The concept is inspired by the Swedish SVT-produced series '' Värsta språket'' ('The Worst Language') with Fredrik Lindström as the host.
Petter Schjerven
Petter Wilhelm Blichfeldt Schjerven (born 20 October 1967) is a Norwegian television host, known from '' Typisk norsk'' which aired on NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Schjerven has previously worked as the host and scriptwriter for t ...
is the host of ''Typisk norsk''. Among other things, the program covers interesting topics in language and communication. It also deals with language enthusiasts and researchers and discusses problems with the
Norwegian language
Norwegian ( no, norsk, links=no ) is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regio ...
.
The first season had 453,000 viewers, the second season 553,000, and the third 622,000.
''Typisk norsk'' won the Gullruten award in 2005 for ''Best culture or magazine program'' and ''Best male host''. In 2006, the editors of the program received .
''Typisk norsk'' has covered, among other things:
* Word separation and hyphenation
*
Slang
Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-g ...
* How Norwegian sounds to immigrants
*
Dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
s
* Norwegian in comparison to
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
*
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
* Where language ability comes from
* The guttural R sound
* The Norwegian method of counting
* Odd translations in films
Kjell
In 2005, ''Typisk norsk''’s
Petter Schjerven
Petter Wilhelm Blichfeldt Schjerven (born 20 October 1967) is a Norwegian television host, known from '' Typisk norsk'' which aired on NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Schjerven has previously worked as the host and scriptwriter for t ...
presented the new letter ''kjell'' on the program, a letter to prevent the ''kj'' sound from being replaced by ''sj'' and disappearing from the language.
The letter ''kjell'' was proposed as a new
letter
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
of the
Norwegian alphabet
The Danish and Norwegian alphabets, together called the Dano-Norwegian alphabet, is the set of symbols, forming a variant of the Latin alphabet, used for writing the Danish and Norwegian languages. It has consisted of the following 29 letters sin ...
in 2005. This was a humorous proposal to promote the prescriptively correct pronunciation of the
voiceless palatal fricative
The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C. It is the non-sibilant equi ...
(), which is written in standard orthography, and oppose the growing tendency to pronounce it as a
voiceless postalveolar fricative
A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceles ...
() or
voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant
The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ("c", plus the curl also found in its voiced counter ...
(), written or , as the first sound in the word ("shirt"; ).
The voiceless palatal fricative () is unstable in many Norwegian dialects, and is disappearing from the speech of young people; younger speakers in
Bergen
Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula o ...
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...
even merge into the
voiceless retroflex sibilant
The voiceless retroflex sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is which is a Latin letter s combined with a retroflex hook. ...
.
The proposal for the new letter was created by design agency
SDG
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked objectives designed to serve as a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future".United Nations (2017) R ...
and presented by Petter Schjerven in the television program ('Typically Norwegian'). A similar glyph had been used before for in the Norwegian phonetic transcription