Kebab norsk (), also known as Kebab Norwegian or Norwegian multiethnolect, is a language variant of Norwegian that incorporates words and grammatical structures from languages spoken by immigrants to Norway such as Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Tamil, and Chilean Spanish,Hilde Lundgaard, "Kebabnorsk goes caramba", Aftenposten 26 January 2002 (in Norwegian)
^ as well as English. The multiethnolect differs from an ethnolect because it is spoken not by one particular ethnic group, but by the many varying immigrant populations in Norway, drawing elements from each of their respective languages. The Norwegian multiethnolect emerged from immigrant youth communities, particularly those in eastern neighborhoods of Oslo, and has spread to broader youth populations through permeation of mainstream Norwegian media. The term sociolect is also useful when discussing this variant, because sociological factors such as age, neighborhood, ethnic identity, and gender play important roles in classifying and understanding Norwegian multiethnolect.
The Norwegian multiethnolect was first identified in the 1990s, and in 1995 the Norwegian scholar Stine Aasheim wrote her M.A. thesis on the subject titled: "Kebab-norsk: fremmedspråklig påvirkning på ungdomsspråket i Oslo."Published in Ulla-Britt Kotsinas, Anna-Britta Stenström and Anna-Malin Karlsson, eds., Ungdomsspråk i Norden, föredrag från ett forskarsymposium: Språk och Kultur i Norden, 3, 14-16 juni 1996, Stockholm, MINS 43, Stockholm: Institutionen för nordiska språk, 1997, OCLC 470107861, pp. 235-42.Toril Opsahl, "'Egentlig alle kan bidra'", Meninger (Opinions), Aftenposten 18 March 2010 (in Norwegian) Kebab-norsk is the original name used to identify to the variant, with "kebab" referring to a popular Middle Eastern dish of the same name. This terminology is based on stereotypes of its users, and thus the name "Norwegian multiethnolect" is becoming increasingly more common.Lars Anders Kulbrandstad, "Etnolekter—hva er det?"Archived 2011-07-24 at the Wayback Machine, Norsklæreren 3 (2003) 5-13, p. 12 (pdf) (in Norwegian)
^Bente Ailin Svendsen and Unn Røyneland, "Multiethnolectal facts and functions in Oslo, Norway", International Journal of Bilingualism March 2008, pp. 63-83, abstract. The first dictionary of Norwegian multiethnolect was published in 2005 by Andreas Eilert Østby, Kebabnorsk ordbok.Bernt Erik Pedersen, "– Avblås jakten på 'innvandrerromanen'" Archived 2011-07-24 at the Wayback Machine, Dagsavisen, Kultur (Culture), 23 April 2005, retrieved 21 February 2011 (in Norwegian)
Since then, the variation has grown steadily more represented in the media, appearing first in literature, before making its way into music, film, and television. A number of large European cities have emerging multiethnolects, often prevalent in working class neighborhoods with high populations of immigrants, for example Kanak Sprak in Berlin, Perkerdansk in Copenhagen, Multicultural London English in London, Rinkeby Swedish in Stockholm, and Straattaal in Rotterdam.
Immigration to Norway
Post-World War II immigration After the end of World War II, western European countries that were a part of the NATO Alliance and the anti-communist bloc began receiving a large influx labor immigrants from less industrialized countries. Norway was largely unaffected during this post-war rush, although belonging to this bloc, the vast majority of laborers settling in France and Germany. Refugees, often those escaping from countries in the communist bloc such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but also Jewish populations, comprised a noteworthy immigrant demographic in the 1950s and 1960s. However, due to lower relative attraction when compared with other Western European nations, very few settled in Norway. Those who did were offered housing and jobs, yet many reflected that their "foreignness" led to their exclusion from Norwegian society, especially Jewish immigrants, who also dealt with Anti-Semitic attitudes. Norway's foreign-born population continued to decline through the census of 1950, and Norway did not become a net immigration country until 1968. In the year 1970, only 1.3 percent of the Norwegian population was foreign citizens, of which 46.7 percent came from Nordic countries. Only 5 percent of the immigrant population came from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Labor immigration of the 1970s By the end of the 1960s, demands for labor were beginning to reach their saturation point in other Western nations and regulations around immigration began to increase. Norway began experiencing its first waves of immigration in the late 1960s and early 1970s when laborers came to meet the needs of Norway's still-growing industries. The largest group of immigrants were laborers from Pakistan, followed by Morocco and Turkey. They were known as fremmedarbeidere, or foreign workers, and increasingly concerns grew around this demographic being exploited for cheap labor due to a lack of understanding of Norwegian, and lack of education for their children. Due to concerns around Norway's ability to integrate new foreign populations, Norwegian authorities instituted a yearlong immigration stop on non-Nordic labor immigrants in July 1974. The conversation around immigration in Norway primarily became an issue of whether immigrants would be able to assimilate into Norwegian culture, or if they would maintain their own. The job market had room to accommodate new immigrants in blue-collar positions, but immigration restrictions and labor regulation steadily increased throughout the decade. Similar to the experience of earlier refugee populations, discrimination on the basis of nationality and ethnicity continued to serve as the largest obstacle many immigrants would face.
Asylum seekers The next significant wave of immigrants came in the mid-1970s through the 1990s with refugees and asylum seekers from all around Europe, Asia, and Africa. The number of asylum seekers increased significantly in this decade, such that it surpassed the allotted quotas for refugee populations and the Norwegian government had little opportunity to plan for and anticipate these waves of immigrants. Following the Vietnam War, a significant number of Vietnamese asylum seekers found their way to Norway. Following the coup d'état in Chile in 1973 and subsequent Pinochet regime, a number of Chilean refugees made their way to Norway. Both of these demographics reported feeling loneliness and isolation from the greater Norwegian populace, largely due to linguistic differences. By 1987, Norway housed asylum seekers from 60 countries, with the largest numbers coming from Iran, Chile, Sri Lanka, and Yugoslavia. As Norway joined the Schengen area in the 1990s, immigration policy continued to become increasingly restrictive. The topic of illegal immigration became hotly debated across Europe, yet many refugees managed to stay in Norway even without the necessary documentation on humanitarian grounds.
Current immigration statistics These waves of immigration marked the beginning of Norway, and more specifically Oslo, as an increasingly multicultural place with a great breadth of linguistic diversity. At the beginning of 2021, there were 800,000 immigrants in Norway. The largest share of immigrants in 2021 came from Poland, followed by Lithuania, Sweden, Syria, and Somalia. At the beginning of 2021, there were 197,900 Norwegians born to immigrant parents in Norway. In Oslo specifically, the population of immigrants and Norwegian-born with immigrant parents accounts for 33.1 percent of the city's population. The countries most strongly represented in Oslo are Pakistan, Poland, Somalia, and Sweden. The majority of these immigrants live in the neighborhoods of Stovner, Alna, and Søndre Nordstrand, where roughly half of the population has an immigrant background. The ever-growing diversity of ethnic groups within Oslo has led to the proliferation of the Norwegian multiethnolect, a variant which reflects the many languages from which it draws vocabulary and grammar.
Neighborhoods of Oslo The three neighborhoods of Oslo with the highest immigrant populations are Stovner, Alna, and Søndre Nordstrand, each with an immigrant population of over 50 percent, but other neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations are Bjerke, Grorud, Gamle Oslo, and Grünerløkka, each at about 35 percent. The largest immigrant population in Oslo comes from Pakistan, at roughly 22,000 people. Around 13,000–14,000 people come from Poland, with similar numbers coming from Sweden and Somalia. Districts of Oslo hold different immigrant demographics, with the majority of immigrants coming from Somalia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka living in the outer eastern districts, while immigrants coming from Poland and Sweden live in inner eastern districts. In Groruddalen and Søndre Nordstrand, Norwegian-born to immigrant parents makes up 16 percent of the population, which is greater than the 7 percent from all of Oslo and 2.5 percent from the total country.
From 2008 to 2014, the population of Oslo grew 14 percent. The population growth in Oslo of non-immigrant populations is 4 percent, while the population growth of immigrant populations is 40 percent. In Grünerløkka, the population with an immigrant background has grown by over 50 percent in six years, while the immigrant populations in Bjerke and Gamle Oslo increased by 40 percent, closer to Oslo's average. The neighborhoods Groruddalen and Søndre Nordstrand amount to 27 percent of Oslo's total population, while they account for 38 percent of the immigrant population and 60 percent of the population of those Norwegian-born to immigrant parents.
A study of language use in Grønland, a neighborhood in the Gamle Oslo district where the immigrant and Norwegian-born to immigrant population is roughly 35 percent of the population, showed that signage in the neighborhood appeared not just in Norwegian, but also in English, Urdu, a language popularly spoken in Pakistan and thus prevalent in neighborhoods with the most Pakistani immigrants, Tamil, Kurdish, and Arabic, among other languages. While a majority of signs were in Norwegian at 52.5 percent, signs intended only for immigrant viewers appeared oftentimes in neither Norwegian nor English. Things such as handwritten notes, posters, and parts of names of cafes and shops composed the 2.8 percent of signs in Urdu, and 1.1 percent of signs written in each Tamil, Kurdish, and Arabic.
Linguistic interference Language transfer, or interference, is the insertion of qualities from one's native language into a different language by bilingual and multilingual language speakers. The concept of interference is central to the study of the Norwegian multiethnolect. It can be observed in any ethnolect, although the concept becomes more complicated with multiple languages interacting. In the case of the Norwegian multiethnolect, features from an immigrant's native language influence their speech patterns when speaking Norwegian. However, the speakers of Norwegian multiethnolect may have a wide variety of native languages. In the case of Norwegian-born people with immigrant parents, Norwegian may be their first language. Therefore, Norwegian multiethnolect draws its vocabulary and influence from a large variety of languages, and speakers of Norwegian multiethnolect might use language that derives from a language which the speaker themselves does not know. Speakers of Norwegian multiethnolect speak in a way that reflects a large variety of languages because of the linguistic diversity of the community at large, rather than the linguistic background of an individual.