Introduction

A very interesting aspect about the Norwegian language is something called tones or pitch accents. In this article you’ll learn what tones/pitch accents are, learn about the difference in meaning when using the two different Norwegian tones, and hear the difference in pronunciation between tones. You can hear the pronunciation in the video below.

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Pronunciation of the Norwegian tones (video)

Below you can hear how the Norwegian tones/pitch accents are pronounced.

What are Norwegian tones/pitch accents?

Norwegian pitch accents refer to the linguistic phenomenon when two similar words have different meanings based on the pronunciation, the pitch, of the words. An example of this is the Norwegian words bønner (beans) and bønder (farmers). Watch the video above for more explanation, examples and exercises.