Learn the verbs tenke ("to think") and tro ("to believe")
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Gina:Hi, I am Gina. |
| Nora:And I am Nora. |
| Gina:And welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Beginner Season 1, Lesson 15 - Have You Seen That Norwegian Ad? |
| Nora:In this lesson you’ll learn about the verb Å tenke. |
| Gina:Which means “To think”. We’ll see how it fits into different sentences. |
| Nora:We’ll also be looking at its similarities with the verb å tro... |
| Gina:Which means “to think” or “to believe”. The verbs aren’t that different in Norwegian, but still different enough that we should talk about it. |
| Nora:The conversation is between Espen and Tore, who are discussing the new ideas that came up during their daily meeting. |
| Gina:The sentences can be quite long but try to keep up with them. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina:A funny fact is that the Norwegian marketing sector is quite renowned for their quality commercials and ads. |
| Nora:Yeah, there are many Norwegian CEOs and Managers in high-ranking and international marketing agencies out there. |
| Gina:If you watch Norwegian television, you’ll see quite a few good commercials, or you might be familiar with some already. |
| Nora:Norway also has a history of international award-winning comedy. If there is one thing Norwegians can do right it’s humor, though we’re maybe not as good as the Brits! |
| Gina:Well, the Brits have always been the kings of comedy. But back to Norwegian entertainment. The fact that Norwegians like comedy is well reflected in their commercials and ads. |
| Nora:There’s also an annual award for the best commercials that year called “gullfisken”. |
| Gina:That translates to “The Goldfish”. |
| Nora:If you have a chance, you should definitely watch them sometime. Maybe you’ll even see one of Espen’s commercials appear! |
| Gina:You’re joking right, he isn’t real, is he? |
| Nora:Who said he wasn’t real? |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Gina:Let’s take a closer look at some of the words and phrases from this lesson. We’ll have a look at the word litt which means “a bit” or “a little”. In English there are these two words along with “slightly” that all have approximately the same meaning. |
| Nora:In Norwegian we have the one word litt. |
| Gina:It would work in all the scenarios you’d use either “a bit” “a little” or “slightly” in English. Let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:Jeg er litt sulten. |
| Gina:“I am a little hungry.” |
| Nora:Jeg er litt irritert. |
| Gina:“I am slightly irritated.” |
| Nora:Next we have the word reklame. |
| Gina:Again, a word that has a few different variants in English, while in Norwegian only one term exists. |
| Nora:Reklame could mean either “advertisement” or “commercial” |
| Gina:It can also mean “PR”, as in “It’s bad PR for the firm”. |
| Nora:Which would be Det er dårlig reklame for firmaet. Again, it’s fairly simple. “Reklame” is the only word you need to remember. |
| Gina:But watch out for the different usages for “commercial” in English. In this case we are only talking about commercials, in the sense of advertisement. Let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:Vi trenger mer reklame for produktet. |
| Gina:“We need more publicity for the product.” |
| Nora:Så du den bilreklamen som går på TV? |
| Gina:“Did you see that car ad that airs on TV nowadays?” |
| Nora:Okay, now onto the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gina:In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use... |
| Nora:...Jeg tenker and jeg tror. |
| Gina:So in the grammar point in this lesson, we’ll look at the verbs å tenke which mean “to think”. |
| Nora:And å tro which means “to believe”. |
| Gina:Both are quite often used interchangeably like in English, but there are some differences in Norwegian that we need to sort out. Let’s first break down the sentence in our lesson, and look at how that was constructed. |
| Nora:Jeg tenker forslaget til Volvo-reklamen hadde noe for seg. |
| Gina:This sentence roughly translates as “I think the proposal for the Volvo ad had some potential.” Now let’s look at each word individually. |
| Nora:First we have the pronoun and subject of the sentence jeg. |
| Gina:You should know this one, it means “I”. |
| Nora:Next up we have the verb in present tense, tenker from å tenke. |
| Gina:Which means “to think”. After that, we have a noun in defined form. |
| Nora:Forslaget |
| Gina:It means “the proposal”. |
| Nora:Then we have the preposition til, which means “to”. |
| Gina:But as we explained in an earlier lesson, in this case it translates as “for”. |
| Nora:Next is the combined noun Volvo, the brand and reklamen. |
| Gina:A defined noun that means “ad” or “commercial” as we explained above. We’ll be looking more at these compounds in a later lesson. |
| Nora:After this, we have the verb hadde - it is the simple past tense of å ha. |
| Gina:Which means “to have”. This is followed by the pronoun... |
| Nora:...Noe which means “something”. Then the preposition for. |
| Gina:This time it means “for”. And finally, the passive possessive pronoun... |
| Nora:Seg, which means “its or itself”. |
| Gina:This sentence is pretty straightforward, except for the last part which could be explained as a phrase. |
| Nora:(Something) ... hadde noe for seg. |
| Gina:It means that something “had some potential”. Notice how this is past-tense. |
| Nora:We can conjugate the phrase in infinitive by conjugating the verb å ha. Å ha noe for seg |
| Gina:Now it becomes “to have some potential”. While the direct translation doesn’t make much sense in English, it still gives a little hint about what it means. It is “To have something for itself”. |
| Nora:Now for the main content of this grammar point. In our sentence we saw the use of the word å tenke. |
| Gina:Which means “to think”. |
| Nora:But in other sentences in our dialogue we also saw å tro. |
| Gina:Here it meant “to believe”. The thing is, we can actually alternate between the two words in any of the sentences, since they both have the same meaning in the context of the sentences. |
| Nora:As an example, let’s take the first part of the sentence in our dialogue. Jeg tenker forslaget til... |
| Gina:“I think the proposal for...” |
| Nora:This sentence can easily be changed to Jeg tror forslaget til... |
| Gina:Which translates as “I believe the proposal for...” This works the same as in English. |
| Nora:There’s also this slight difference in nuance that also exists in English. Å tenke.... |
| Gina:“To think”.... might be perceived as being less determinate. |
| Nora:Yes, while å tro or “to believe” is quite strong. |
| Gina:Now for the difference between these two. |
| Nora:Let’s look at å tenke first. In essence it means “to think”, so there are some instances where it is impossible to substitute it with å tro. |
| Gina:Ok, let’s look at some examples where these two would change the meaning of a sentence significantly. |
| Nora:Jeg tenker på mamma. |
| Gina:"I am thinking about mom." |
| Nora:Jeg tror på mamma. |
| Gina:“I believe in mom.” As you can hear the difference is quite similar in English. |
| Nora:The same is true for å tro. While it is quite normal to substitute it with å tenke. |
| Gina:In some instances, this is impossible. Let’s hear some examples. |
| Nora:Jeg kan ikke tro hva jeg sier. |
| Gina:“I can’t believe what I am saying.” |
| Nora:Jeg kan ikke tenke hva jeg sier. |
| Gina:“I can’t think what I am saying.” |
| Gina:Wow, quite a different outcome. |
| Nora:Now as a final note. You might have noticed by now...that å tenke is a verb that conjugates a bit differently in Norwegian than English. |
| Gina:Ah yes, we have talked about how Norwegian doesn’t use the copula “to be” as often as English, just when using adjectives and nouns. |
| Nora:So “I am thinking” directly translated to Norwegian would be jeg er tenker. This is bad grammar in Norwegian, since we never use er with verbs. |
| Gina:So it should be jeg tenker instead. |
Outro |
| Gina:That’s enough for this lesson. |
| Nora:We hope you learned something from this lesson, and we’ll see you in the next one! |
| Gina:Make sure to read the lesson notes, and leave a comment! |
| Nora:Ser dere neste gang! |
| Gina:Thanks for listening, bye! |
| Nora:Ha det! |
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