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by sfn42 890 days ago
Nynorsk was an attempt at creating a written language closer to the spoken language. The problem is that in Norway out dialects are widely different. For example, the phrase "I am" is written as "Jeg er" in bokmål, "Eg er" in nynorsk. Nobody says "Jeg" - it can be pronounced as "Jei", "Eg", "Æ", or even "Oss" though that's a different word that some dialects use in place of the "correct" one.
3 comments

Yeah. Secretly it's actually just written Sunnmøre dialect with a bunch arcane and archaic vocabulary words from around the country thrown in, that if they're used, everyone else has to google.

That's why I hate reading it so much. I swear every time i read an article or something in Nynorsk, there's at least one word in there I've never seen in my life, that sounds like something a Sunnmøring spat out during a stroke.

But that word is the first example that you don't actually pronounce bokmål the way it's written: Yes, some say "Ye" and some say "Eeg", but no one pronounces it "Yeeg" except maybe foreigners reading from a text.
Some dialects also say "i" for I. (but pronounces like an English "e")