# All Nordic languages: not at all (word ordering)



## Alxmrphi

Hi all,

Quick survey of the Nordic languages if you don't mind 
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


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## mosletha

Well, Norwegian Bokmål is "ikke i det hele tatt" while Norwegian Nynorsk is "ikkje i det heile".


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## Alxmrphi

Ah, there's no similar form to inte alls/alls ekki in any of the Norwegian languages?
I suppose Bokmål would reflect Danish, too?


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## hanne

"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.


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## Alxmrphi

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.


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’.


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## Tjahzi

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).)


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## Alxmrphi

> 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 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.


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## TomTrussel

In bokmål we got "slett ikke" like the Danes, with the not-so-polite "ikke faen" as the often used synonym  

TT


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## zyzzy

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.


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## Vejrudsigt

hanne said:


> "Slet ikke" in Danish.



Ingen elskov til ordet "overhovedet"?


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## hanne

Vejrudsigt said:


> Ingen elskov til ordet "overhovedet"?


None that is relevant to the topic of this thread: word order.


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## AutumnOwl

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.


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.


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## Alxmrphi

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.


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## NoMoreMrIceGuy

Just to pipe in: We also have the word order the other way around in _ekki allskostar_ but the meaning can be slightly different.

_Ég er alls ekki svangur.
Ég er ekki allskostar svangur._


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## timtfj

mosletha said:


> Well, Norwegian Bokmål is "ikke i det hele tatt" while Norwegian Nynorsk is "ikkje i det heile".


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.


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## Havfruen

You might shorten it using _slett ikke_


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## timtfj

Havfruen said:


> You might shorten it using _slett ikke_


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.)


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## Halfdan

Faroese is _als ikki_.


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## Havfruen

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.)



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_


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## vestfoldlilja

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.


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## Ben Jamin

Havfruen said:


> You might shorten it using _slett ikke_


Note that "slett" and "alls" have quite different meaning. "slett" in this context means soemthing like "simply".


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## timtfj

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.


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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