Learn about using the Norwegian word for "or" and about the pauses you may sometimes notice in longer Norwegian sentences
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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 17 - Getting from A to B in Norway |
| Nora:In this lesson you’ll learn how to use the conjunction eller which means “or”. |
| Nora:We’ll also look at using pauses in Norwegian sentences. |
| Gina:That also ties into looking at longer sentences and how they are built. |
| Nora:The conversation is between Scott and the Concierge at his hotel. |
| Gina:Scott is out traveling again. He is asking the concierge at the hotel because he isn’t entirely sure how to go. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina:So it’s quite common to use domestic flights to travel between certain parts of Norway. |
| Nora:That’s right. It’s not always cheapest to go by car or train either. |
| Gina:Especially when you consider the time it takes to either drive the car from A to B, or sit on the train. |
| Nora:It takes more than a day to drive from the bottom part of Norway to the furthest north place, Alta. It’s such a long drive that few people actually attempt it. |
| Gina:And because certain airlines offer such cheap tickets, there’s almost no point. |
| Nora:Some common intercity flights are Oslo to Bergen, Oslo to Trondheim, Oslo to Stavanger and Oslo to Longyearbyen. |
| Gina:What’s that final place you mentioned there? |
| Nora:Oh, Longyearbyen is the main settlement in Svalbard. It even has a town hall and a university. |
| Gina:Wow, I need to go there the next time I visit Norway. |
| Nora:Yeah, be careful though - it’s the only place in Norway where polar bears live. |
| Gina:Oh, cool! |
| Nora:“Polar bear” in Norwegian is “isbjørn”, by the way. |
| Gina:Good to know! |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Gina:Let’s take a closer look at some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Nora:We’ll start with the adjective kjapp. |
| Gina:It means “swift” or “quick”. |
| Nora:It’s not used that often by Norwegians anymore. Instead, people tend to use the adjective rask. |
| Gina:Which means “fast” and is a catch-all for “swift”, “quick”, “fast” and “speedy”. |
| Nora:But you might hear kjapp or even the word kvikk used sometimes. |
| Gina:The latter sounds like and translates to “quick”. When it comes to using these words, I recommend you use variations, since they make your language a bit more colorful and natural. |
| Nora:The distinction between them is a lot like the English equivalents, so it shouldn’t be too hard to use them. kjapp is “swift”, kvikk is “quick”, and rask is “fast”. |
| Gina:Let’s hear some examples of them in context as well. |
| Nora:Hvor raskt kjører denne bilen? |
| Gina:“How fast can this car go?” |
| Nora:Han er kvikk til å løpe og hjemme seg. |
| Gina:“He is quick to run and hide.” |
| Nora:Det gjelder å være kjapp |
| Gina:“It’s essential to be swift.” |
| Nora:The next word is sikker. |
| Gina:It means “secure” or “confident”, but it’s context-dependent. |
| Nora:Sikker is most commonly used in the context of security. |
| Gina:However, just like the word “confident”, it means that they are “sure” or “feel secure” when they are “confident”. |
| Nora:The word “self-confident” also contains sikker in Norwegian - it’s selvsikker. |
| Gina:Let’s look at some examples of this as well. |
| Nora:Hvor sikker er denne båten? |
| Gina:“How secure or safe is this boat?” |
| Nora:Jeg er sikker på at han er skyldig. |
| Gina:“I am confident that he is guilty.” Good! Okay, now onto the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Nora:In this lesson, you’ll learn about using the word eller, as well as pauses in longer sentences. |
| Gina:Let’s start with eller. It’s not too hard and doesn’t need too much explanation. But first we’ll look at a sentence from our dialogue, and break it down. |
| Nora:Tog eller fly er nok kjappest. |
| Gina:This translates roughly as “Going by train or air is probably fastest.” Now let’s break this down. |
| Nora:First we have the noun Tog. |
| Gina:It means “train”. |
| Nora:This is followed by the conjunction eller or “or” in English. |
| Gina:This is the word we’ll be looking at in this lesson. |
| Nora:Next we have the noun, fly. |
| Gina:It means “Plane”, or “flight”. |
| Nora:Then we have the verb er, a present tense of å være |
| Gina:Which means “to be”. Then we have the adverb... |
| Nora:Nok. |
| Gina:Which means “probably”. And finally, the conjugated adjective. |
| Nora:Kjappest, from kjapp. It translates as “fast”, or “swift” as we learned earlier. |
| Gina:This sentence is quite simple. In fact translating it word by word to English wouldn’t make much sense, since English often requires more elaborate grammar to make sense. |
| Nora:Right, in Norwegian however, the sentences can often be quite simple. Next we have the word eller from the sentence. It is used to compare the two alternatives. |
| Gina:There are no extra words needed or any complicated grammar here. You simply put it in between the words you want to compare, like English “train” or “car”. |
| Nora:For example. Hus eller hytte. |
| Gina:This means “house or cottage”. |
| Nora:Sliten eller trøtt. |
| Gina:Which means “tired or sleepy”. The same formula also works for longer sentences. Let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:Har du vært hjemme i ferien eller ute og reist? |
| Gina:"Have you been home during the vacation or out traveling?" |
| Nora:Hun visste ikke om hun likte maten eller hatet den. |
| Gina:“She didn’t know whether she liked the food or hated it.” |
| Nora:There is also one more use for eller, which isn’t that common in English. |
| Gina:What’s that? |
| Nora:It is putting the eller at the end of a yes/no question. |
| Gina:In Norwegian, this is quite common when expressing doubt whether the answer will be yes. |
| Nora:Liker du fisk eller? |
| Gina:“Do you like fish(..or not)? |
| Nora:Skulle vi gå på kino eller? |
| Gina:“Were we going to the cinema or?” |
| Nora:Good! |
| Gina:Now let’s look at some longer sentences, and where to put pauses. |
| Nora:Again, this works much like English, but let’s look at it to get a clear idea of how to form longer sentences in Norwegian. |
| Gina:Let’s take a sentence from our dialogue. |
| Nora:Jeg tenkte meg til Skagen, men jeg er ikke helt sikker på hvordan jeg skal komme meg dit. |
| Gina:This translates as “I am planning to go to Skagen, but I am not entirely sure how to get there.” |
| Nora:Now, the first part of this sentence is everything that comes before the comma. |
| Gina:...And usually this is spoken without a pause. |
| Nora:The next part goes until the word helt. |
| Gina:Which means “entirely”. Here the stress is usually put on the word helt, which is the final word in this part, or the word is dragged out to emphasize it. |
| Nora:Then finally, the last part of the sentence. |
| Gina:Although this is quite similar to the way you’d speak the sentence in English, it’s not entirely similar. |
| Nora:Most often, Norwegians put stress on the sentence they want to emphasize, or drag it out in order to get their point across. |
| Gina:Let’s look at a few more examples, and please emphasize the pronunciation to make it clearer. |
| Nora:Ok. Jeg tenkte meg ut i båten i kveld, vil du bli med? |
| Gina:“I thought I’d take a ride with the boat tonight, would you like to join?” |
| Nora:Her har du beviset på at jeg er helt uskyldig i saken. |
| Gina:“Here you have the evidence that I am completely not guilty in this trial.” |
Outro |
| Gina:That’s all for this lesson. |
| Nora:Make sure you listen again, especially to the last part, because proper pauses can be tricky. And they’re very important. |
| Gina:And make sure you check the lesson notes for more information. |
| Nora:Feel free to leave us a comment as well. See you next time! |
| Gina:Thanks for listening, bye! |
| Nora:Ha det! |
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