Learn how to use the Norwegian word for "because" and to express reasons for why something is a certain way
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Gina:Hi everyone, I’m Gina. |
| Nora:And I am Nora. |
| Gina:And welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Beginner Season 1, Lesson 22 - Why Is That Norwegian University Closed? In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use the word “because”. |
| Nora:Which is fordi in Norwegian. |
| Gina:While the word itself might not be that hard, the sentence structure is quite different from the sentence structure that follows the use of “because” in English. |
| Nora:In our dialogue we’ll meet Kjersti and Mille, Lars’ partner. Mille and Kjersti are discussing why the university was closed. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina:There aren’t really that many universities in Norway, are there? |
| Nora:No there aren’t. Then again, the school system in Norway is quite different than in many other countries. |
| Gina:Yes, indeed. As we talked about earlier, students’ education depends on what type of high school they go to. |
| Nora:Yes. This is much the same for university. In Norway, a bachelor’s degree usually takes you three years to finish. But bachelor isn’t the only thing you can get. |
| Gina:That’s right, many vocational schools offer diplomas to prove that you have gone through some sort of education. |
| Nora:Yes, there are two types of vocational schools in Norway. The ones where students get relevant diplomas within a certain field of study, like Performing Arts or 3D animation for example. |
| Gina:And these diplomas are relevant overseas as well? |
| Nora:That depends on the employer or the institutions. However, most schools in Norway are considered to be of high quality and accepted as a means of education. |
| Gina:Then there’s the second type of vocational school, which is sort of a school where students study for a year just to get experience within something. |
| Nora:These schools offers diplomas, but the disciplines students study within are usually not considered to be academically relevant. |
| Gina:Ah yeah I know those. Schools where you practice volleyball for example, or a martial art, or just study religion for a year? |
| Nora:Exactly. Alright that was a bit of an insight into Norwegian culture for you. |
| 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:The word å skjønne means “to understand”. |
| Gina:And, there are two different ways to say “to understand” in Norwegian. |
| Nora:The other one is å forstå. |
| Gina:The difference here is quite intricate. |
| Nora:While the former å skjønne often translates as “to see”, as in Ah, jeg skjønner. |
| Gina:Translated as “oh, I see”, and it is most commonly used in situations where “logic” is a keyword. |
| Nora:Forstå on the other hand relates to understanding itself, as in understanding language. |
| Gina:Let’s look at a few examples. |
| Nora:Jeg forstår ikke hva du sier. |
| Gina:“I don’t understand what you are saying.” |
| Nora:Jeg skjønner ikke hvordan du gjør det! |
| Gina:“I don’t understand how you do it!” |
| Nora:Next we have the word juleferie. |
| Gina:This is the equivalent of “Christmas holidays”. In Norwegian as we pointed out in last lesson, words that are built up using two or more words are usually pronounced and written as one single word. |
| Nora:In this case juleferie is the combination of jul. |
| Gina:“Christmas”... |
| Nora:And ferie. |
| Gina:“Vacation”. In many cases, like with this word, by combining two or more words, you’ll end up adding some extra vowels to make the resulting word more natural. |
| Nora:In most scenarios, that means adding an e. Jul + e + ferie. |
| Gina:Alright let’s look at some examples here too. |
| Nora:Når begynner juleferien? |
| Gina:“When do the Christmas holidays start?” |
| Nora:Hva gjorde du i juleferien? |
| Gina:“What did you do during the Christmas holidays?” Okay, now onto the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gina:In this lesson, you’ll learn how to say “because”. |
| Nora:Which is fordi in Norwegian. “fordi” is a conjunction, and so it’s used when you’re connecting two sentences. |
| Gina:In this lesson’s grammar point and beyond, we’ll move on from sentence structures, and focus on some individual words. |
| Nora:But firstly, we’ll look at the word fordi. |
| Gina:While we have already seen this word before, what we haven’t done is have a more detailed look at how this word fits in a sentence. |
| Nora:We’ll get to that, but first, let’s look at and break down the sentence in our dialogue. |
| Gina:Yes. Let’s jump right in! |
| Nora:Ah, det er fordi det er juleferie. |
| Gina:This translates roughly as “Ah, but that’s because it’s already Christmas holidays.” Now let’s look at it word by word. |
| Nora:First we have Ah. |
| Gina:This is just an interjection similar to the English “ah”. |
| Nora:Next we have the pronoun det. |
| Gina:Which you probably know means “that”. |
| Nora:It is followed by the present tense verb er, from å være. |
| Gina:“To be” in English. |
| Nora:Then we have the conjunction we’ll be talking about in this lesson, fordi. |
| Gina:Which as you know by now means “because”. |
| Nora:This is followed by the pronoun det |
| Gina:“That” again. |
| Nora:And again the present tense verb er |
| Gina:“Is”. And finally we have the noun... |
| Nora:Juleferie or “Christmas holidays”. |
| Gina:While it was quite easy to translate this sentence word for word, that’s not always the case for sentences containing fordi. |
| Nora:We looked at conjunctions in an earlier lesson, but at that time we didn’t include fordi. |
| Gina:While many of the other conjunctions also warranted a longer, deeper explanation, you’ll probably come to use fordi quite often, and so it’s good to know it well. |
| Nora:When you build a sentence with fordi, you essentially have one full sentence before the “because”, and one after. |
| Gina:You might remember the SVO, and then another part after it, another SVO. So it looks much like this. |
| Nora:Jeg må en tur hjem, fordi jeg må spise. |
| Gina:"I need to be home shortly, because I need to eat." |
| Nora:Jeg is the subject, må is the verb, and en tur hjem is the object. |
| Gina:Then we have fordi and the whole SVO repeats itself. Let’s hear another sentence and here you can try to figure out which word is which part of the SVO. The answer is in the lesson notes. |
| Nora:Gutten kom hjem sent, fordi han hadde lekt i parken. |
| Gina:(Pause) “The boy came home late, because he had been playing in the park.” |
| Nora:A sentence with fordi in it will almost always follow this structure. |
| Gina:Now, what if we put the conjunction at the beginning of a sentence? |
| Nora:Fordi du har arbeidet så godt, kan du ta deg tre dager fri. |
| Gina:Because you’ve been working so hard, you can take three days off. |
| Nora:Now here’s a small quirk. Fordi works directly with the verb on the other side of the comma, like an open phrase. |
| Gina:Unlike English, where the phrase becomes a whole lot more complex. “Because....., it doesn’t mean that.....” |
| Nora:This way of phrasing it is hard to avoid in English, unless you reverse the sentence to a normal “you don’t need to be silent because you’re eating.” |
| Gina:Now lastly fordi also works without the pause, or comma, in a sentence, just like the English “because”. |
| Nora:Han kom fordi han trengte mat. |
| Gina:“He came because he needed food.” |
| Nora:Just note that in Norwegian, it’s safer to put a comma, or a pause, in the sentence than to leave it out. |
| Gina:Now finally in English there’s the phrase “because of”. |
| Nora:It’s easy to directly translate that into Norwegian and say fordi av. |
| Gina:But that is incorrect. If you want to make the phrase “because of” in Norwegian you’ll have to say. |
| Nora:På grunn av. |
| Gina:This directly translates as something like “on the grounds of”, or “for the reason of”. So just be a bit careful on that point. |
| Nora:Jeg kommer ikke på grunn av feber. |
| Gina:“I’m not coming because of a fever.” |
Outro |
| Gina:Ok, that’s all for this lesson. Please check the accompanying lesson notes to reinforce what you’ve learned in this lesson. They are especially handy for mastering sentence structure. |
| Nora:Also leave a comment in our comment section on the lesson page. |
| Gina:Thanks for listening everyone, and we’ll see you next time! |
| Nora: Ha det bra! |
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