The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsNeed help from those who know German. One of my pet peeves with English is our lack of
words for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" when you're talking about people way past the age of maturity.
Does German have some words? With their penchant for compound words, they might...
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,686 posts)Boyfriend = Freund; girlfriend = Freundin. The Norwegians have a better idea - they use a gender-neutral word, kjæreste, to designate a significant other.
DFW
(54,376 posts)Interesting that the Norwegians use that where the Swedes next door still use pojkvän and flickvän (boyfriend and girlfriend).
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,686 posts)Last edited Mon May 1, 2017, 07:51 PM - Edit history (1)
of Bokmål, which rejected Swedish influences and stuck more to Danish, which was used for official purposes - and which also uses kjæreste to mean both boyfriend and girlfriend. Norwegian is written a lot like Danish but is pronounced more like Swedish; Danes sort of swallow a lot of consonants.
DFW
(54,376 posts)I studied Swedish intensively in college, can fool Swedes into thinking I'm one of them for at least a short time. They say the three Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible. I can make out maybe 75% of Norwegian, depending on which version is being spoken. But Danish? Ugh. A ton of glottal stops with a token vowel thrown in a gesture of good will. I can read it, but don't ask me to follow a conversation!
Orrex
(63,209 posts)DFW
(54,376 posts)"Freund" and "Freundin" are the terms most commonly used in speech.