# Norwegian: kort [pronunciation]



## Xander2024

Hello again,

could someone please tell me how the word "kort" is pronounced and whether the pronunciation depends on the meaning. To the best of my knowledge, in Swedish it's [kårt] (short) and [ko:rt] (card). I've failed to find any information on the pronunciation of this word in Norwegian. 

Thanks a lot in advance.


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## TomTrussel

They are pronounced the same, both like Swedish "short", you'll have to work out of the context which is meant.

TT


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## Xander2024

Takk, Tom.


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## TomTrussel

I should probably add that we usually say "postkort", "julekort" "bursdagskort" etc instead of just "kort" in the "card" meaning. 

TT


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## Alxmrphi

Is that a Romance-language loan, that [kårt] / *kort* word?
(short)


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## Xander2024

Hardly so, Alxmrphi. It's of Germanic origin - Old English "sceort".


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## Alxmrphi

Xander2024 said:


> Hardly so, Alxmrphi. It's of Germanic origin - Old English "sceort".


Oh yeah, didn't think of that.
I just know Italian/Spanish have "corto" to mean short, but I guess they're all cognates anyway.
I didn't put together the lack of coalescence in North Germanic (sh/sk), then removal of the [s] to reach the same word.

For me, knowing about the different cognates was confusing.

Icelandic: *skort*
English: *short*
Norwegian: *kort*
Spanish: *corto*
Italian: *corto*

My mind naturally grouped the two as above... and not:

Icelandic: *skort*
English: *short*
Norwegian: *kort*
Spanish: *corto*
Italian: *corto*

That's what an [s] can do, completely make you think something else, even when the top three all belong to the same (sub)language family.
Seeing so much Romance influence in Swedish, I guess I assumed it could be a Scandinavian thing.


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## Gavril

Alxmrphi said:


> Is that a Romance-language loan, that [kårt] / *kort* word?
> (short)



I think so. In Swedish, the word used for "map" is _karta _(< Latin _charta _: see here), and _kort_ is mentioned as a byform of this word (here).

The word _kort _meaning "short" has a separate etymology. On the second page I linked, it says that this _kort _is from Lat. _curtis_ (> Italian _corto_ etc.).


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## Alxmrphi

Gavril said:


> Alxmrphi said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Is that a Romance-language loan, that [kårt] / *kort* word?
> (short)
> 
> 
> 
> I think so. In Swedish, the word used for "map" is _karta _(< Latin _charta _: see here), and _kort_ is mentioned as a byform of this word (here).
Click to expand...

Ooh maybe I wasn't wrong then!
Thanks Gavril!


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## Xander2024

In Russian we also say "karta" for "map". Who knows who we've borrowed it from?


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## NorwegianNYC

Hi! I believe 'kort' (_short_) is originally a loan from Latin 'curtus' = short. English 'short' is not related, but is related to Norwegian 'skorte' = _be short of_.
Kort (_card_) is through Italian 'carta', Latin 'charta', Greek 'khartes', originally Egyptian 'kh-r-t' = _layer of papyrus, leaf of paper_​.


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## TomTrussel

This sounds about right to me NorwegianNYC. In Norwegian we also have "stutt" with the same meaning (short), from Old Norse _stuttr, _but it's not common in the Oslo dialect any more. It's very common just north-east of Oslo though.

TT


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## NorwegianNYC

In addition - I just came to learn English cognates of 'kort' are found in _to be curt_ and _to curtail_. English 'short' is again related to Norwegian _skorte_, but also _skjære/skåret, (glass)skår_ and _skard (mountain). _The Norwegian expression 'skårunge' is also related to 'short'


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## Alxmrphi

NorwegianNYC said:


> In addition - I just came to learn English cognates of 'kort' are found in _to be curt_ and _to curtail_. English 'short' is again related to Norwegian _skorte_, but also _skjære/skåret, (glass)skår_ and _skard (mountain). _The Norwegian expression 'skårunge' is also related to 'short'


They aren't English cognates, but English borrowings that are actually cognates from Latin.
The cognates with English can be seen (as you say) where the "sh" remains. Where it fell away, shows a borrowing where the initial segment has fallen away.
Icelandic 's _*skera*_ (to cut) shows the PIE _(s)ker- _(cut) root used to form all these words. English didn't drop the 's' (while in Latin it did).

If Norwegian shows the Northern Germanic sk- root, then these are cognates, but it was because of this that I suspected 'kort' (short) might have been a borrowing (which it now seems to be). That's how it appears to me anyway. (I don't say this with any authority by the way, it's just the way I believe it is. I welcome comments and corrections if I am wrong!).


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## NorwegianNYC

Hi! My point is that 'curt' and 'curtail' are cognates of 'kort', since all three are borrowings from Latin _curtus_. Also, it is correct that 'short' and 'curtus' also are cognates, but much further back in time. The sk/sh relationship stems from around 800 AD, when the West Germanic languages reduced sc- to sh- in English and sch- in German, and only Dutch kept some vestiges of it in sch-, where it is pronounced (I am glad I am writing this, because I cannot actually pronounce it...) s+kh (as in Schiphol). Of the Scandinavian languages, Norwegian has come further in the same transition (but much later in time) than Swedish, which has done incompletely, and Danish, which has hardly reduced the -sc/sk- at all.

English has absorbed far more Scandinavian words than Scandinavian has done from English. Almost all English words starting with (hard) sk- og sc- are of Scandinavian origin. A funny thing is that in some cases the Anglo-Saxon word lives on side by side the Scandinavian borrowing, but one has the 'soft' sh- and the other the 'hard' sk- sound, such as _shatter_ and _scatter_, _shirt_ and _skirt_, and _shriek_ and _screech_.


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## Tjahzi

Hm, what did you mean to say regarding the assimilation of /sk/ in the Nordic languages? It's worth noting that Swedish treats the /sk/ cluster differently depending on the following vowel. Back vowels (+/u/) leave it unaffected, while front vowels render it [ɧ].


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## Alxmrphi

Tjahzi said:


> Hm, what did you mean to say regarding the assimilation of /sk/ in the Nordic languages? It's worth noting that Swedish treats the /sk/ cluster differently depending on the following vowel. Back vowels (+/u/) leave it unaffected, while front vowels render it [ɧ].


Whose post are you referring to Tjahz?  Either way that'd be considered a more modern change while earlier forms it would have been /sk/ throughout, right?



> Hi! My point is that 'curt' and 'curtail' are cognates of 'kort', since all three are borrowings from Latin _curtus_.


Ah okay, I see what you meant now. I thought you were talking about native Germanic reflexes and not (non-native Romance) cognate(borrowing)s.



> The sk/sh relationship stems from around 800 AD, when the West Germanic  languages reduced sc- to sh- in English and sch- in German, and only  Dutch kept some vestiges of it in sch-, where it is pronounced (I am  glad I am writing this, because I cannot actually pronounce it...) s+kh  (as in Schiphol)


It happened much earlier than 800AD, right?

I thought it was somewhere around 400AD (in the period before English came to England, and this change has been used to support the claim that 'Frisian' is the closest related language to England because during that time, they underwent the start of this change together in the time before the pre-500AD move to England, but after the split from Dutch. I'll have to check that out I'm not sure if I've got all the details correct there but I'm sure I remember hearing that. 800AD was just before/around the time when the Vikings invaded, I really doubt that it was just right before that point that the palatalisation started to occur, it must have been there in the language for at least a few centuries before (placing it in the period I had earlier assumed).

If the Vikings started to invade and settle in 880AD, did you mean to write 800AD was (around) when the sk-/sh- pattern started to occur in English, and not when the velar became palatal? That'd make more sense to me.


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## NorwegianNYC

Alxmrphi said:


> It happened much earlier than 800AD, right?
> 
> I thought it was somewhere around 400AD (in the period before English came to England, and this change has been used to support the claim that 'Frisian' is the closest related language to England because during that time, they underwent the start of this change together in the time before the pre-500AD move to England, but after the split from Dutch. I'll have to check that out I'm not sure if I've got all the details correct there but I'm sure I remember hearing that. 800AD was just before/around the time when the Vikings invaded, I really doubt that it was just right before that point that the palatalisation started to occur, it must have been there in the language for at least a few centuries before (placing it in the period I had earlier assumed).



My apologies. It was a clumsy way of putting it. It was supposed to say '[...] languages were reduced from sc- to sh- in English [...]'.

Indeed - as you point out - West and North Germanic started their separation about 3-400 AD, and there is evidence sk/sh was one of the early indicators of this split. By 800 AD (and let me see if I get it right this time) the sk-North and sh-West languages were already clearly defined, although we do not know whether English still pronounced it Dutch-style (s+kh) og modern (sh), at this time many sk-words also came as loans from Scandinavia (despite English having the same words, but clad in sh-).


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah it's like a philologist's murder investigation when looking back at these sorts of issues.
It's extremely interesting  All we have to go on is inconsistent spelling and a few guesses at what we expect to be rhyming couplets in poetry (as prose didn't make the page until much later).


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## Xander2024

I'd never have thought a simple question like the one I asked could trigger off such a heated discussion.

Thanks a lot everyone for the informative conversation.


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## Tjahzi

My previous post was in reference to this comment.


NorwegianNYC said:


> Of the Scandinavian languages, Norwegian has come further in the same transition (but much later in time) than Swedish, which has done incompletely, and Danish, which has hardly reduced the -sc/sk- at all.



As for your question, yes, this is a relatively recent development, though I can't tell you whether it went directly from [sk] to [ɧ]. Also, it's worth noting that this phoneme exhibits considerable dialectal variation.


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