Those who know me know that I’m a bit pedantic when it comes to spelling and spelling errors. This morning, Aftenposten.no had an article about a common spelling error amongst Norwegians (article in Norwegian).

Molde FK, a Norwegian premier league team have made supporter scarfs for the upcoming Cup Final November 8th.
In Norwegian, as opposed to English, you should not have a space between Cup and Final. As the image shows, the scarf says “CUP FINALE“, but what it should say is “CUPFINALE“.

Molde used an external company, Scan Trade, to make the the scarfs. Scan Trade’s representative, Geir Tønnesland has the following to say:

We should have found the error before shipping the design.

I agree completely. It’s not very hard to proofread the text on a supporter scarf!

Further, Tønnesland says:

At the same time, we have short deadlines here.

Now that is no excuse. If print text on fabric for a living, you should know how to spell, besides – It’s like 5 words!

You might call me pedantic, but this is unfortunately not a unique case. This kind of spelling error (no: særskrivingsfeil) is becoming very common in the Norwegian language. It is one of the most common mistakes among Norwegians.

Why one shouldn’t split words

The main reason why two (or more) words should be concatenated in Norwegian is that splitting them completely changes the meaning.

An example is “Leie priser” that translates to “Fed up prizes” or “Not-so-good prices”.
The correct spelling would be “Leiepriser” that simply means “Rental prices”.

The organization Astronomer mot Orddeling (AMO) has many more fun examples of such errors.
They’ve also published a book, “Tunfisk biter i vann” (Tuna bites in water), with loads of examples.

Highly recommended Christmas gift!