H. L. Mencken

“ So common is this practise of borrowing that no English word is refused admittance into this vocabulary provided it can stand the treatment it is apt to get. Some words, indeed, are used without any appreciable difference in pronunciation, but more generally the root, or stem, is taken and Norse inflections are added as required by the rules of the language.” Sometimes the English loan-word and a corresponding Norwegian word exist side by side, but in such cases, according to Dr. ”

“ Pretty good.) The words in italics would be unintelligible to a recent arrival from Norway; they are all American loan-words. “Such words,” says Dr. Flaten, “are often mutilated beyond recognition by an American
. In the case of many words the younger generation cannot tell whether they are English or Norse. I was ten years old before I found that such words as paatikkel (=particular) , staebel (=stable) , fens (=fence) were not Norse, but mutilated English. I had often wondered that poleit, trubbel, söpperéter were so much like the English words polite, trouble, separator. ”

“ Dr. Flaten lists some extremely grotesque compound words, e. g., nekk-töi (necktie) , Kjaens-bogg (chinch-bug) , hospaar (horse-power) , gitte long (get along) , hardvaer-staar (hardware-store) , staets-praessen (state’s-prison) , traevling-maen (traveling-man) , uxe-jogg (yoke of oxen) , stim-baat (steamboat) . Pure Americanisms are not infrequent, e. ”