Learn about the most common conjunctions and how to use them
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Gina:Hi everyone, I am Gina. |
| Nora:And I am Nora. |
| Gina:And welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Beginner season 1, Lesson 19 - Connecting the Dots in Norway. In this lesson you’ll learn about conjunctions. |
| Nora:We’ll look at how they work in different parts of a sentence, and how they bind sentences together. |
| Nora:This is continuing on from our last two lessons, where we started to look at longer sentences. |
| Gina:The conversation is between Lars and Kjersti. |
| Nora:Kjersti has arrived in Oslo and is going around doing her chores. |
| Gina:They are discussing what Kjersti is planning to do while in Oslo. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina:Something Norwegians seem quite preoccupied with around Christmas time, is Christmas shopping. |
| Nora:Definitely. Christmas is a major holiday in Norway. Even though the Norwegian state and church officially parted ways quite recently, and now Norway is a secular country, much of our tradition lies in Christianity. |
| Gina:In the U.S. people are usually wary of mentioning Christmas without mentioning Hanukkah, or Id-al-Adha maybe, or even Winter Solstice. |
| Nora:Right. In Norway Christmas is the reigning holiday, and few people say anything other than ‘merry christmas’. Even atheists and to some extent people from other religions celebrate Norwegian Christmas. |
| Gina:True, and the tradition has recently become quite secular, hasn’t it. It has more of a focus on Santa and on giving gifts. |
| Nora:Ah, gift giving...in Norway many people start to panic during the advent season, as they worry what they should give their friends and family for Christmas. |
| Gina:And it seems the Christmas sales start earlier and earlier every year! |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Gina:Let’s take a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Nora:In this lesson we’ll look at the word greie. |
| Gina:It literally translates as “thing”. It’s an ambiguous, abstract noun that denotes anything that the speaker isn’t able to put a name to. |
| Nora:However in Norwegian, there is not just one word for “a thing”, there is another word that is used as the same abstract noun. It’s ting. |
| Gina:It is more similar to the English word, and probably easier to point out. |
| Nora:There is a difference between the two words, though. |
| Gina:Yes, and it’s not easy to learn this nuance. |
| Nora:In fact in most cases the words are entirely interchangeable. In some cases though, only one of the words sounds natural. |
| Gina:Let’s see some examples where only the word used is the one that sounds natural. |
| Nora:Jeg har noen ting hjemme. |
| Gina:“I have some stuff at home.” |
| Nora:Hva er greia liksom? |
| Gina:“What’s the problem?” |
| Nora:Now, let’s also explain the word først as well. |
| Gina:It means “first” but it has two forms depending on usage in Norway. |
| Nora:The one we saw in this lesson’s vocab is først as in jeg var først! |
| Gina:Which translates as “I was first!” |
| Nora:The other common form is as an ordinal number, første. |
| Gina:This is a defined form and will always need the article den or det preceding the number. |
| Nora:By ordinal numbers we mean “first”, “second”, “third”, and so on. |
| Gina:The thing about Norwegian ordinal numbers is that they are always in defined form. So “the first”, “the second”, “the third”, etc. In Norwegian the numbers following første would be: |
| Nora:Andre |
| Gina:“Second” |
| Nora:Tredje |
| Gina:“Third” |
| Nora:Fjerde |
| Gina:“Fourth” |
| Nora:Femte |
| Gina:“Fifth” |
| Nora:Sjette |
| Gina:“Sixth” |
| Nora:Syvende |
| Gina:“Seventh” |
| Nora:Åttende |
| Gina:“Eighth” |
| Nora:Niende |
| Gina:“Ninth” |
| Nora:Tiende |
| Gina:“Tenth” Let’s look at some examples in context too. |
| Nora:Han var alltid den første til å kjøpe de nyeste gadgetene. |
| Gina:“He was always the first one to buy the newest gadgets.” |
| Nora:Hun var først ut med nyhetene. |
| Gina:“She was the first out with the news.” Okay, now onto the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gina:In this lesson, you’ll learn about conjunctions |
| Nora:We’ll look at how conjunctions in Norwegian help bind together longer sentences. |
| Gina:While this is largely just like English... |
| Nora:...It’s better to have it explained, so there is no confusion on how the longer sentences work in Norwegian as well. |
| Gina:First off, in our dialogue we had a fairly long sentence. Let’s look at that one and break it down. |
| Nora:Jeg trenger å kjøpe noen gaver for jul, og samtidig fikse noen greier ved universitetet. |
| Gina:This sentence translates roughly as: “I need to buy some presents for Christmas, and at the same time fix some stuff at the University” That’s quite a long one. Thinking back to our last two lessons, you might see that this sentence is mostly built up of adverbs and pronouns or prepositions. Now let’s break it down to see what we are talking about. |
| Nora:First we have the familiar pronoun jeg |
| Gina:As you should know by now, this means “I”. |
| Nora:This is followed by the verb in present tense, trenger, from å trenge |
| Gina:Which means “need”. Then we have a verb again, this time in infinitive. |
| Nora:Å kjøpe or “to buy”. The reason is because å trenge can work as a modular verb, where you attach other verbs at the end to form the verb “need to (verb)...” |
| Gina:Now after the verb comes the object of the sentence. |
| Nora:Noen gaver. Noen is an adverb. |
| Gina:And it means “some”. |
| Nora:And gaver is the noun. |
| Gina:And it translates as “gifts” or “presents”. |
| Nora:And finally we have the Indirect Object, or “time modifier” as we learned in the previous lesson; for jul. The preposition for means “for”. |
| Gina:And then the noun jul which translates as “Christmas”. We then have a comma which is followed by the conjunction... |
| Nora:Og, which means “and”. And then there’s another conjunction samtidig. |
| Gina:A slightly tricky one in English. It means “At the same time”. Then we do the whole Subject Verb Object over again. Though notice there is no Subject mentioned. |
| Nora:This is because we already know it, jeg, from the beginning of the sentence. That’s why we move directly to the verb in infinitive, å fikse |
| Gina:Which means “to fix”. |
| Nora:Then comes the Object noen greier. It consists of the adverb noen. |
| Gina:Meaning “some”, and the noun... |
| Nora:Greier. |
| Gina:Meaning “things”. |
| Nora:And finally the Indirect Object again. Ved universitetet. |
| Gina:The preposition ved means “by” and the noun... |
| Nora:Universitetet. |
| Gina:Which is obviously “university”. |
| Nora:Altogether, it’s: Jeg trenger å kjøpe noen gaver for jul, og samtidig fikse noen greier ved universitetet. |
| Gina:This translates to something like: “I need to buy some presents for Christmas, and at the same time fix some stuff at the University” |
| Nora:So what about the conjunctions? |
| Gina:Well, in our dialogue we saw 3 conjunctions. Let’s look at these and have some examples. First we have. |
| Nora:Og. |
| Gina:It means “and”, and it is the most common conjunction. It’s used to tie two sentences that cannot be tied together using other conjunctions. It is basically just a “concatenator”. But dont worry too much about this term listeners! An example please. |
| Nora:Har du tid til å lage middag og gå tur med hundene? |
| Gina:“Do you have time to make dinner, and take the dogs for a walk?” Ok, next we have... |
| Nora:Samtidig. |
| Gina:It means “At the same time”. It’s commonly used to tie actions together through a time expression. Let’s look at an example. |
| Nora:Jeg er en stor fan av videospill, samtidig liker jeg ikke å spille for lenge. |
| Gina:“I am a big fan of video games, at the same time I don’t like to play for too long.” Great! Now let’s look at the next one. |
| Nora:Mens. |
| Gina:This means “While” or “meanwhile”. It also ties sentences together in a time frame. Let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:Jeg var hjemme og spiste, mens barna var pa skolen. |
| Gina:“I was at home eating - meanwhile the children were at school.” |
| Nora:There are also a few others that aren’t in the dialogue, but are important nonetheless. |
| Gina:Let’s take a look at those. First we have. |
| Nora:Også. |
| Gina:It means “as well”. It’s used to concatenate sentences or words that have a contextual relation. That might sound complicated, so let’s look at an example. |
| Nora:Han hadde trent mye de siste to månedene. Han hadde vært på diett også. |
| Gina:“He had exercised a lot the past two months. He had been on a diet as well.” Now for the final one. |
| Nora:Desto |
| Gina:It’s a brace yourselves, “comparative conjunction”. Needless to say, this one is a bit tricky. It’s an adverb as well as a conjunction. And is quite common. It works as a comparative similar to “the more...” in English. Let’s see a few examples. |
| Nora:Sover man lite blir man fort sliten, desto fortere mister man konsentrasjonen også. |
| Gina:This means something like “If one doesn’t sleep sufficiently one will quickly get tired, the quicker one loses one’s concentration as well.” |
| Nora:Jo bedre man sover, desto mer uthvilt blir man. |
| Gina:“The better one sleeps, the more rested one feels.” |
Outro |
| Gina:Well, we’ve covered a lot in this lesson, so let’s leave it there. |
| Nora:Listeners, we hope you learned something valuable about all those conjunctions. |
| Gina:Make sure to read the accompanying PDF lesson notes too! Thanks for listening, bye! |
| Nora:Sees neste gang! |
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