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December 1[edit]

Norwegian in Billy and Mandy[edit]

In the Billy and Mandy episode "A Kick in the Asgard", due to an incident, a norseman takes the place of Billy for much of the episode, while Billy enjoys life in Valhalla feasting, sparring with other norsemen and the Norse pantheon, and "unlimited access" to valkyrie booty (which he hilariously ignores) and root beer. The norseman meanwhile, is rabidly chopping up most everything he sees, all while spontaneously speaking what I've always presumed was Norwegian gibberish. While I'm aware that Dee Bradley Baker apparently voiced the norseman thanks to the credits (and IMDb confirming this), my question is whether or not there was an actual attempt to have him speak Norwegian for the character, and I simply can't make out much because he's talking too fast and I'm only familiar with what the language looks like. Or if its just that, gibberish that sounds Scandinavian or Germanic. I am inclined to believe the latter because Asgard's gatekeeper has signs that read "Ont naal aan Asgard" and "Poort Bewaarder" which I recognise as Dutch. It is a cartoon intended for kids after all. --72.234.12.37 (talk) 14:28, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The episode is available here. I'm not Norwegian but the Norse viking doesn't say anything comprehensible in Norwegian; nor does the prosody sound like somebody speaking Norwegian. If anything, the viking sounds like an English-speaking person who is trying to speak Norwegian-sounding gibberish, sort of like this. Thuresson (talk) 00:27, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While I can't make out understandable words, it sounds more like German to me. If they had made an effort to represent the language spoken by the Vikings, which was Old Norse, then the conservative Icelandic language would have been a better approximation than either of the two Norwegian languages, but of course the languages diverged, also in how they sounded. This gives an impression of the difference (skip to 5:20). --Lambiam 08:27, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I expect that they were hoping that not many American children were familiar with either Old Norse or modern Icelandic :-) Alansplodge (talk) 09:16, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]