Setting up a Norwegian voice
- Record 5 to 15 seconds of a native speaker whose accent suits your audience: Oslo, Bergen, Trøndelag or elsewhere.
- Set the voice's Language to Norwegian. Written Bokmål and Danish look alike, so it's worth checking.
- Test with numbers and a word pair that differs only in tone.
Bokmål, Nynorsk and dialects
Norway has two written standards and no single spoken one. Most text is in Bokmål, and that's the safer choice for a script. If you write in Nynorsk, test a few lines first and listen for words read with Bokmål habits. The accent comes from the sample, so a voice cloned from a Bergen speaker keeps its Bergen melody even when reading Bokmål, which is how many Norwegians actually speak.
Writing Norwegian for the voice
- Two ways to count: 21 is tjueen in modern Norwegian and enogtjue in the older system; 7 is sju or syv, 20 tjue or tyve. Write the words you want heard.
- Times: halv ni is 8:30. Write times in words.
- Tones: Norwegian has word tones, so hender (hands) and hender (happens) sound different. The model picks from context; a native sample gives the most natural melody.
- Keep æ, ø and å.
- Abbreviations: f.eks. → for eksempel, osv. → og så videre, kr → kroner, ca. → cirka.
A passage to record
Jeg har hatt lyst til å spille inn dette i flere uker, så nå gjør jeg det. Det er en rolig kveld, kaffen er klar, og
jeg har endelig noen minutter for meg selv. Vi får høre hvordan det blir.
"I've wanted to record this for weeks, so now I'm doing it. It's a quiet evening, the coffee's ready, and I finally have a few minutes to myself. We'll hear how it turns out."
A dialogue to test with
Ingrid: Er du her allerede? Jeg har ventet siden klokka åtte.
Lars: Unnskyld! Det var kø hele veien.
Ingrid: Ja vel, nå er du her. Skal vi bestille?Scandinavian projects
Norwegians understand Danish and Swedish text fairly well, but a voiceover should be in the audience's own language, with its own native voice. See Danish and Swedish.