Friday, October 8, 2010

Hello there. I'm grammar girl.

Tone
Looking at this photo, I realise three things:

1. I could use a haircut.

2. I could use a good night's sleep. No, make that fifteen. (You paying attention, robot fighter? No? Thought not.)

3. (And non-norwegian reader, please forgive me for this:) I need to decide whether to end my female nouns in -a or -en in the Norwegian version of my story. Ack. Just can't decide. Both feel natural to me, and I seem to veer from one to the other in the space of a paragraph. I'm torn between my spoken language and the need to make the writing feel timeless and a little solemn. This is a serious story, poignant and full of loss and heartache (and talking teddy bears). Of course it needs to be 'jenta' and 'hytta', anything else would make it sound contrite. But should it say 'sida' or 'siden'? 'Døra' or 'døren'? 'Gata' or 'gaten'? Can I even choose if 'jenta' is given? What do you use? Would anyone care? And why didn't I just make my mind up before I wrote 93 000 words?

Sigh. This is promising to be one incredibly annoying cleanup job.

6 comments:

Catherine Denton said...

What are you talking about? You're gorgeous. And I'm sure the right noun ending will come to you.
Making Life a Work of Art!

Li:ne said...

Hm. Well, I'm the same as you, I mix and match as a please.

My advice is that it is more important that every word feels natural to you than following any standard.

So keep mixing and matching. No one will care. I will care however if you put too many -a's in there, because often they bug me :). But not in 'jenta', of course. I would prefer 'siden' to 'sida'. With 'Dør' and 'gate' either way is fine.

And by the way, you do not need a haircut. You do need sleep, but it doesn't show in that picture.

camilla said...

*copying and pasting Line's comment*

Inger Merete said...

-en.

tone almhjell said...

Thanks for the input, dears. I've decided to go with a mix. -a where it's obvious, as in 'jenta', 'musa' and 'hytta'. -en otherwise, as in 'døren', 'lykten' and 'gaten'. Also: 'beina' instead of 'benene'. I will try to stick to the form I've chosen for each specific word and hope that this will be consistent enough.

Li:ne said...

Yeah, you need to go to my flickr account and get the code for the picture one more time. Sorry about that, I have replaced the original file.

Here it is: http://flic.kr/p/8F2P4X