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Comment by areyousure | Hacker News Reader

Please forgive me, for I am actually curious about this:

Were you previously aware of the term "Kjølen" to refer to the (Northern) Scandinavian mountain range? And if so, when you wrote

> I have not heard of any Kjolen Mountains,

were you really distinguishing between Kjolen and Kjølen? Are you a native Norwegian speaker?

I understand that ø is a "distinct" letter in Norwegian, but to my uneducated eyes/ears it sounds similarly baffling to a French speaker not recognizing the "Pyrenees" because they're used to "Pyrénées".

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I'm Swedish, not Norwegian, but I can understand not making the connection between "Kjølen" and "Kjolen" because both of those are words and have completely different meaning, and as you say 'ø' is quite distinct from 'o'.

Just to take a random example, if you were to say "Bird Peak" instead of "Bard Peak" it wouldn't be immediately obvious what you meant.

I didn't make that connection since the term Kjølen to refer to the whole mountain range is rather archaic. If it was more common with this specific meaning, I may have understood it.

I'm a Swedish native (mutually intelligible with Norwegian), and yes, when I read, "o" and ø/ö are very different and distinct letters.

I would probably make the connection if we are talking about very commonly used words, or if I knew what to look out for. In this case, I am not terribly familiar with that mountain range, so I probably wouldn't make the connection by myself.

We have 3 different "special" letters in Norwegian, all of which have their own "latinifications", so it can sometimes be difficult to see when it has been done. (ø to o, æ to ae/a/e, å to a/aa)

Incidentally, Kjolen and Kjølen are both nouns of their own. (kjolen means "the dress" as in what a woman could wear. kjølen can mean "the fridge" as in "put something in the fridge"/"put something in a cool place")

> kjølen can mean "the fridge" as in "put something in the fridge"/"put something in a cool place"

I could be wrong, but I would guess "kjølen" would translate to the "the keel" in this case? Perhaps refering to the shape of the mountain range looking like a keel up-side down.

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