Posts under Vocabulary

Hver dag.

Posted by Kari
Oct
7
2009

Every day.  I’m getting into this theme of things we do daglig (daily).  Of course some of the things I do in my dagligliv (daily life), you do not do and some of the things you do in your dagligliv, I do not do.  However, many of the things we do in our dagligeliv (notice I didn’t add anything after ‘liv‘ to make it plural, because ‘liv‘ is a one-syllable ‘et’ noun, so it doesn’t get any suffix in the indefinite plural-Husker du?  Do you remember?)

a few other words you might like to know when you talk about the frequency in which things occur:

vanligvis-usually                           av og til-now and then                    igjen og igjen-time and again

noen ganger-sometimes             sjelden-seldom                                alltid-always

hele tiden-all the time                aldri-never                                        ofte-often                           

Hva gjør jeg ?  What do I do every day?

Jeg drikker kaffe hver dag så snart jeg våkner.  I drink coffee every day as soon as I wake up.

Hver dag spiser jeg frokost før jeg går på jobb (notice the use of inversion).  Every day I eat breakfast before I go to work.

�Jeg tar en dusj hver dag.  I take a shower every day.

Hver dag sjekker jeg eposten min.  Every day I check my email.

And on to other frequencies…

Jeg snakker med faren min ofte.  I talk to my father often.

Noen ganger liker jeg å spise pannekaker til frokost (another use of inversion).  Sometimes I like to eat pancakes for breakfast.

Jeg leser sjelden bøker.  I read books seldomly.

Av og til vasker jeg bilen min.  Now and then I wash my car.

Hun prøver alltid å være snill.  She always tries to be nice.

De reiser aldri til Europa.  They never travel to Europe.

Vanligvis løper jeg med hunden min om morgenen.  Usually I run with my dog in the morning.

Hunden min har mye energi hele tiden.  My dog has a lot of energy all the time. 

Igjen og igjen glemmer kjæresten min å slå av lysene.  Time and again my boyfriend forgets to turn the lights off.

You get the idea, right?  Just remember to invert the verb and subject when the adverb/adverbial phrase comes first.  What do you do hver dag?

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Familie

Posted by Kari
Sep
16
2009

Family.  I have not yet written a post about familie and I think knowing how to talk about the different members of a family is a good thing.  It’s nice to know the word for all of the family members and then to be able to ask questions and reply to questions with answers with regard to familie.  So let’s start with the basics.

mor/mamma is mother/mom, far/pappa is father/dad, foreldre is parents

søster is sister, bror is brother

datter is daughter, sønn is son

tante is aunt, onkel is uncle

kusine is cousin (female), fetter is cousin (male)

søskenbarn is cousins, tremenning is second cousin

bestemor is grandmother, bestefar is grandfather, besteforeldre are grandparents

and more specifically, farmor is father’s mother, farfar is father’s father, morfar is mother’s father, and mormor is mother’s mother

oldemor is great grandmother, oldefar is great grandfather

et barn is a child, et barnebarn is a grandchild

svigermor is mother-in-law, svigerfar is father-in-law

niese is niece, nevø is nephew

stemor is stepmom, stefar is stepfather

venn is friend, vennine is female friend

kjæreste is girlfriend or boyfriend

kone is wife, mann is husband

And if that’s not enough, let’s learn a few questions…

Har du en kjæreste?  Do you have a girlfriend\boyfriend

Er du forlovet?  Are you engaged? 

Er du gift?  Are you married? 

Har du slektninger i Norge?  Do you have relatives in Norway?

Har du familie i Norge?  Do you have family in Norway?

While it used to be very common for Norwegian children to have many siblings, it is now common for a Norwegian child to have one or two siblings, or perhaps none at all.  It is also common today for couples to have children without being married first, or even without being married at all.  When a couple lives together and is not married, this is called samboerskap.  The two are samboer.  This is accepted by the majority of the population and is most likely only going to become more popular. 

Now that you know a fair amount of Norwegian familie words, practice calling your mother mor, your father far and so forth. 

 

 
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Lange ord

Posted by Kari
Aug
6
2009

long words.  Norsk is notorious for long words, most of which are conglomerations of several words.  A professional linguist would probably be able to tell you why this is the case, but I can give speculation a shot-why create an entirely new word when you can use 2 or more existing words to describe something?  Even if it’s longer than it’s English counterpart…no reason, as far as I’m concerned.  Norwegian is a simple language and the abundance of words strung together to describe one thing is definite evidence of this simplicity-one of the many reasons I love norsk. 

Time to learn some lange ord!

menneskerettighet means human rights (et mennekse is a human, en rettighet is a privilege or right)

lungebetennelse means pneumonia (en lunge is a lung, en betennelse is an inflammation)

luftfartsdirektoratet means Civil Aeronautics Administration (luftfart means aviation, et direktorat is a Directorate)

en forbedringsanstalt is a reformatory (forbedring means improvement and en anstalt is an institution)

inflytelsesrik means influential (en inflytelse is an influence, rik is rich)

et helsetilsyn means hygiene (helse is health, et tilsyn is an inspection)

hemmelighetsfullhet means secretiveness (hemmelig means secret/confidential, hemmelighet is secrecy, and het is the common subject for abstract nouns, meaning -ity, -ment, or -ness)

folkevandring means migration of nations (et folk is a people, or in this case a nation, en vandring is a hike, a ramble, or walk)

et tilleggsspørsmål means a supplementary question (tillegg is in addition to, et spørsmål is a question)

en standpunktkarakter means a mark based on character (et standpunkt is a standpoint and en karakter is a character)

et tankeeksperiment is a hypothesis or supposition (en tanke is a thought and et eksperiment is…well I think you can figure it out)

There are many more of these long word/multi-words.  Of course we have them in English and I imagine in all languages, but norsk seems to have an abundance of them.  And aren’t they fun to say?

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the passage of time

Posted by Kari
Jun
3
2009

I think it’s about time I address the concept of time since there are so many words that describe it and stand for it.  You might be wondering what I mean.  I mean days of the week, months in the year, long ago, in the future, tomorrow, etc.  So we’ll be looking at both nouns and adverbs.  Let’s start learning about tid (time)-pronounced “teeeed” with a soft “d”

First, let’s go through the months of the year.  Notice that they are not capitalized (unless of course they begin a sentence, which they rarely ever do).  I will list them in chronological order.

januar pronounced “yahn-you-ahr”

februar pronounced “feb-roo-ahr”

mars pronounced “marsh”

april pronounced “ah-preel”

mai pronounced “my” but the ‘ai’ is a dipthong so you say the ‘a’ first and then the ‘i’ so it sounds a bit different than ‘y’

juni pronounced “yoo-nee”

juli pronouned “yoo-lee”

august pronouned “ow-goost”–refer to the post I wrote on vowels to learn more about the ‘u‘ sound.

september pronounced “september” with a flipped ‘r‘

oktober pronouned “ohk-toh-ber” with a flipped ‘r‘

november pronounced “no-vem-ber” with a flipped ‘r‘

desember pronounced “deh-sem-ber” with a flipped ‘r‘

Mostly cognates, piece of cake, right?  Just remember some of the minor spelling differences

Ok, on to days of the week…

mandag pronounced “mahn-dog”

tirsdag pronounced “teersh-dog”

onsdag pronounced “oons-dog”

torsdag pronounced “toorsh-dog”

fredag pronounced “fray-dog”

lørdag pronounced “lur-dog”

søndag pronounced “suhn-dog”  (consult vowel post for details on the “ø” sound

Ok, now here are some other important words that are associated with time.

et minutt -a minute

en time an hour (pronounced “teem-eh”)

en dag a day (pronounced “dog”)

en uke a week (pronounced “ook-eh”)

en måned a month (pronounced “moan-ed”)

et år a year (pronounced “oar”)

et tiår a decade (pronouned “tee-oar”)

And then we have seasons….

sommer (summer), høst (fall), vinter (winter), and vår (spring).

Now a few adverbs to finish the tid tema (time theme)

i dag - today (i is pronouned “ee”)

i morgen - tomorrow

i går - yesterday

i år - this year

neste år - next year

i fjor - last year

nå - now

da - then

I think that’s enough for now, but if I think of any more, I’ll write another post.  Perhaps next post I will try to use most of these words in sentences and write a little story. 

Nå er det tid for meg å spise frokost og gjøre meg klar til arbeid.  Now it’s time for me to eat breakfast and get ready for work.

 
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Cognates

Posted by Kari
May
22
2009

This post is a long time coming.  As you have likely noticed by now if you’ve had any experience with Norwegian, there are many cognates between the Norwegian and the English languages.  Several reasons account for this, such as the fact that Norwegian is a Germanic language and Norweigan grammar is probably the simplest grammar one can find in European languages.

When I began to think about just how many cognates there are, my mind happened to focus on the natural world.  I was on a bike ride in the country, riding alongside fields and trees, so I suppose that makes sense.  There are typically a few different ways beginning Norwegian learners can identify cogantes: either the words look similar, sound similar, the context gives a clue, or any combination thereof.  For many cognates, just one letter is different.  Maybe it is the first, the last, or one in the middle.  As Norwegian has several foreign characters that do not exist in the English language, sometimes this makes it less obvious that a word is a cognate.  Keep in mind that æ, ø, and å are all vowels.  The letter ‘y’ in Norwegian is also considered to be a vowel, so remember that too.  Knowing these things makes it easier to identify cognates.  So let’s look at some…

tre…..tree (a letter difference).  Tre is pronounced “tray” more or less, with the flipped ‘r’

busk…bush (a letter difference).  Busk is pronounced kind of like “boosk” but to get the ‘u’ sound, you have to make your mouth into a circle shape and say ‘u’

gress…grass (one letter difference).  Gress is pronounced “gress” just like it appears, but flip that ‘r’

hund…dog (think hound) is pronounced like it looks, but keep that ‘u’ trick in mind.

katt…cat (ok, a couple letters off) is pronounced like the English word “cot” but make sure the vowel is really short

mus…mouse (couple letters off) is pronounced as it looks, keep the ‘u’ trick in mind and it’s a long ‘u’

regn…rain (looks similar and sounds even more similar) is pronounced like the “Rhine” river

snø…snow (couple letter different) pronounced “snuh”

vinter…winter (one letter difference) pronounced exactly as in looks, with a flipped ‘r’

sommer…summer (one letter difference) pronounced sew-m (as in to sew a button on) mer with a flipped ‘r’

Were any of the above words difficult to identify?

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