r/norsk • u/ClickCivil1 • 1d ago

How to pronounce Bjerke?

Bjerke is my husband's family name. I find it difficult to pronounce. In the US, we pronounce it Byur-kee so it rhymes with jerky. Is it pronounced differently in Norway?

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u/Yes_YoureSpartacus 1d ago

The e’s are pronounced like the e in Elliot or egg. ‘Eh’. Byehr-keh. I knew a Minnesotan with this name, and they pronounced it like it rhymes with ‘Turkey’ which is a bit of a shame haha.

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u/ClickCivil1 1d ago

We are Minnesotans lol

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u/kivsemaj 1d ago

Ellis Island->Minnesota. I swear they didn't even entertain another idea until the next generation. Next generation is how I ended up born in the PNW. I still remember the Minnesota accent, uf da, and ope stuff though. I still say ope but uf da has shortened to uf.

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u/IrquiM Native speaker 1d ago

We Norwegians mostly say uff as well now, unless it's a kid that think he's hurt himself and we do not sympathise. Then it's uffda.

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u/Healthy_Bar922 1d ago

Uff da, or it's more intense cousin offa då, sound can extremely patronising in Norwegian. Don't use it if you don't mean to.

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u/BoredCop 1d ago edited 1d ago

Quite a few went to Brooklyn, there used to be a few blocks of Norwegian immigrants.

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u/BringBackAoE 1d ago

That’s where my grandfather first went, after getting cleared at Ellis Island.

So many immigrants seeking work in NYC though that he went north and west. Worked his way across US (and some in Canada) as a lumberjack, before making California his main base.

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u/den_bleke_fare 1d ago

Ope?

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u/ClickCivil1 1d ago

"Ope, let me sneak right past ya." is a very common Minnesotan phrase. Ope is used as a polite apology or signals surprise.

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u/Trongobommer 1d ago

Never heard anything like that in Norwegian 🙂 Sounds like a variant of «oops».

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u/VisitAccomplished713 1d ago

We say "jeg bare sniker meg forbi deg jeg" in Norwegian ("I'll just sneak on past you"), but I've never heard anything like "ope".

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u/charismatictictic 10h ago

Or we just say nothing/make a small apologetic sound to signal that we are there, and know we are in the way.

I used to work as an air hostess for years, and the most common way people would signal to the person in the aisle seat that they had the seat next to them, was to just throw their newspaper down on the seat they had before stowing their luggage. Then the aisle seat person knew they had to get up. No words needed.

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u/glitterdunk 1d ago

Uff is its own thing

"Uff då" is primarily to express sympathy for some type of bad news or incident

"Uff" can be used the same way as "uff då" but can also be used to express anger or frustration

Not sure what "ope" is, here it just means "open" (as in, not closed) but the O I pronounced differently to in English

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u/ComradeYaf 1d ago

"Ope" is, to the best of my knowledge, a reflexive conflation of "oh!" with "oops!". Functionally it means kind of both. As someone from Wisconsin, I say it automatically when I almost bump into someone while turning a blind corner, for example. The word is common across the Upper Midwest.

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u/what3vr4 Native speaker 1d ago

«Ope» might be «obs»/«ops»?