Norwegian consonant clusters

You have learnt the consonants of the Norwegian alphabet in the very first week of this course, and by now, you probably have noticed that consonants can cluster.

When that happens, consonant clusters can be pronounced quite differently from their single counterpart.

But how do you know how to pronounce them?

Well, if you have tried our pronunciation tutor program CALST, you might have already found out.

If you haven’t, below you will find some examples of consonant clusters in Norwegian and instructions on how you should pronounce them.

We have tried to describe Norwegian sounds using written English as reference. But you might find similar sounds in your mother tongue or other foreign languages you speak.

The Norwegian sound /∫/ is represented in several ways:

The sound /ç/ is represented in several ways:

In Norwegian there are a set of consonant cluster sounds that we well might call retroflex because they are pronounced with the tip of the tongue curled upwards and a little bit backwards. The bottom part of the tip of the tongue is touching the ridge behind the upper front teeth.

The sounds /ʈ/, /ɖ/ /ɳ/ /ɭ/ are represented by the following letter combinations:

The sound /ŋ/ is written < ng > also in Norwegian:

< n > in front of < k > is in general also pronounced /ŋ/:

Phonetics can be overwhelming, in reality it’s all about speech sounds. That means which kind of sounds you and I can produce with our voice and with our mouth which in many ways is our toolbox.

Every language has its own particular toolbox of speech sounds that we have learnt when we were children.

Learning another language means learning how to use a new, different toolbox: Strange at first, but it doesn’t take long before all makes sense.

Enjoy your new Norwegian toolbox!