Posts under "Vocabulary"

Norwegian language is logical

Posted by kari 10 Comments
Jun 10 2010

It is my personal belief that the Norwegian language is more logical than English-it just makes more sense to me.  I’ve said before that I had a native Norwegian professor in college who said that the Norwegian language is barbaric, it’s simple.  She is absolutely right.  I would like to share a list of words with you that I think exemplify this opinion.

-flyplass (airport) literally translates to “plane place”

-tannlege (dentist) literally translates to “tooth doctor”

-skrivebord (desk) literally translates to “write table”

-

(improve) literally translates to “for better”

-sommerfugl (butterly) literally translates to “summer bird”–ok this one isn’t so obvious, but “summer bird” makes more sense than “butterfly”

-høsttakkfest (Thanksgiving) literally translates to “fall thanks fest”

-lovbrudd (offense) literally translates to “law break”

-lastebil (truck) literally translates to “load car”

-frokostblanding (cereal) literally translates to “breakfast mixture”

-avreise (departure) literally translates to “off travel” or “from travel”

-helligdag (holiday) means “holy day,” and while all holidays aren’t religious, it makes more sense to me to combine two actual words  (holy and day)

-ordbok (dictionary) literally translates to “word book”

-datamaskin (computer) literally translates to “data machine” (as is fairly obvious…)

-gressklipper (lawn mower) literally translates to “grass cutter.”  Why create more words, such as mow?  And you don’t really cut the whole lawn, just the grass.

-førskole (nursery school) literally translates to “before school”

-medhjelper (assistant) literally translates to “with helper”

-tresko (clog) literally translates to “wooden shoe”

-nålevende (contemporary) literally translates to “now living”

-etterkommer (descendant) literally translates to “after comer”

What do you think?  It sure seems like we have created a lot more words than we really need.  How come we didn’t combine more words to form compound words like Norwegian?

Norwegian numbers 1-100

Posted by kari No Comments
Mar 25 2010

Here is a table to assist you with Norwegian numbers 1-100:

Number in English Translated to norsk Transliterated version
0 Null Nool
1 Ett Ett
2 To Too
3 Tre Tray
4 Fire Fee-reh
5 Fem Fem
6 Seks Sex
7 Sju Shoe
8 Åtte Oat-eh
9 Ni Nee
10 Ti Tee
11 Elleve Elv-eh
12 Tolv Toll
13 Tretten Trett-ten
14 Fjorten Fyoor-ten
15 Femten Femp-ten
16 Seksten Sigh-sten
17 Sytten Soot (like ‘foot’)-en
18 Atten Ott-ten
19 Nitten Knit-ten (like ‘kitten’)
20 Tjue *
21 Tjueen **
30 Tretti Trett-tee
40 Førti Furt-tee
50 Femti Fem-tee
60 Seksti Sex-tee
70 Sytti Soot-tee
80 Åtti Oat-tee
90 Nitti Knit-tee
100 Hundre Hund-reh

*the ‘tj’ sound is quite difficult and I don’t believe there is a good way to transliterate it into English.  It is similar to the ‘sj’ sound, which is kind of like ‘sh’ i.e. ”shoe.”  The difference with ‘tj’ is that your top and bottom sets of teeth do not touch like they do with the ‘sj’ sound.  Ok, this may sound very odd, but the following strange description of mine may help you with the pronunciation:  And, please for those of you that have a better explanation for this sound, please share.  You want to touch your tongue to the back of your bottom front teeth and kind of whisper ‘hew’ and then whatever else the rest of the word is, of course.  Honestly, whenever I say a word with ‘tj’ in it, I feel like a snake slithering my tonge:) 

**beyond 1-20, after 20, 30, 40, and so on, you just add the number to the end.  So, 21 is tjueen, 32 is trettito,  and so forth.

Norwegians use double digits to separate phone numbers, like other European countries.  For example: 22 54 19 30

Dates are expressed numerically as follows:  26.06.1985 with the day first, month second, and year third, separated by decimals.

Money is expressed with commas, i.e. 77,00 NOK would be 77 Norwegian kroner.  87,10 NOK would be 87 Norwegian kroner and 7 øre.

Very important to know your numbers and how to express them!

Hver dag.

Posted by kari 2 Comments
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 3 Comments
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. 

 

 

Lange ord

Posted by kari No Comments
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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