You are right. I am from Luxembourg and Luxembourgish is also a Germanic language. I understood some words and as the letter was from South Africa I really thought it was Africaans. Is the « new Norwegian » still that close or really different?
Norway actually has two official written languages. Nynorsk (directly translates to new Norwegian) is based on the different dialects in Norway and less used than bokmål, which is the one in this letter. Bokmål is similar to written Danish, and has had a few changes since the 1930s, but mostly just a few words. «Nu» is now «nå», «dig» is «deg», just examples of how small the changes are. The Norwegian equivalent of «to» before a verb has changed from «at» to «å». There are also some changes to what word is common to use when there are synonyms. The language sounded more formal back then than it does now. So the changes are small enough for it to be completely understandable by a Norwegian, but we would have written it slightly differently today.
The author of the letter says he has sent money home before, so it is a Norwegian living in Africa.
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u/Myla123 May 28 '25
Its Norwegian in 1932. Slightly different from today, but still makes sense for Norwegians.