Learn how to use pronouns
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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 25 - It’s All About You and Me in Norway! In our final lesson for this series we’ll be looking at some pronouns that haven’t been explained a whole lot. |
| Nora:And there are two categories we’ll go through. |
| Gina:First is the uncommon pronouns, second is the passive pronouns, which is a group that doesn’t exist in English. |
| Nora:In our dialogue, we’ll meet Kjersti and Mille again. |
| Gina:They’re using lots of pronouns. |
| Nora:Try to count all of them! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina:Marriage is a defining moment in life in Norway, isn’t it? |
| Nora:It is indeed, like most other cultures in the world, marriage is one of the most important events in life. |
| Gina:Still, divorce happens quite a lot too. |
| Nora:Unfortunately it does. The number of divorces seems to be increasing every year, and with it marriage seems to lose some of its power. |
| Gina:Maybe people are marrying too early. But most married couples and families in Norway do say they live a satisfied life. |
| Nora:Yes. In Norway, marriage is not only a Christian ceremony either. Marriage itself as a legal binding is completely secular, which means marriage laws are quite open in Norway. |
| Gina:So people of the same sex also have the right to marry in the same way that straight couples do. |
| Nora:Yeah that’s right! |
| 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 words we’re going to look at in this lesson are å gå. |
| Gina:“to go”. |
| Nora:And å elske. |
| Gina:Which means “to love”. |
| Nora:Å gå is something we’ve covered before in previous series. |
| Gina:But here’s a quick reminder. The usage in this lesson does not imply the common meaning “to go”. |
| Nora:Instead it is more like “to be”. |
| Gina:Let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:Hvordan går det med dere? |
| Gina:“How are you guys?” |
| Nora:Gikk det bra i går? |
| Gina:“Did it go well yesterday?” |
| Nora:Next we have the word å elske. |
| Gina:“to love”. This word is used just like the English version. |
| Nora:In other words, you could say jeg elsker kake! |
| Gina:Just like you’d say “I love cake!” in English. |
| Nora:So the word is not only used about love for another person, but love for anything. |
| Gina:Sounds easy enough, but let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:Jeg elsker å høre på musikk. |
| Gina:“I love listening to music.” |
| Nora:Hun elsket skoene sine. |
| Gina:“She loved her shoes.” Okay, now onto the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gina:In this lesson, you’ll learn about pronouns. This is the final lesson of this series, so we’ll take it easy with explaining some pronouns that don’t have any proper equivalents in English. |
| Nora:And we’ll look at just how pronouns work in Norwegian. |
| Gina:First off, however, let’s look at a sentence from our dialogue, and break it down. |
| Nora:Vel, han kan være litt dum, men jeg elsker ham fortsatt. |
| Gina:This sentence translates roughly as, “Well, he can be a bit stupid, but I still love him.” |
| Nora:Now first here we have the interjection vel. |
| Gina:Which means “well”. |
| Nora:After this comes the pronoun han. |
| Gina:Which means “him”. |
| Nora:Then we have the modal verb kan. |
| Gina:Or “can”... and “can” modifies the verb... |
| Nora:Være. |
| Gina:Which means “be”. |
| Nora:After this we have the adverb litt. |
| Gina:Meaning “a bit” in English. |
| Nora:Then the adjective that follows is dum. |
| Gina:This is a naughty word, it means “stupid”. |
| Nora:Then we have a comma, followed by the conjunction men. |
| Gina:Which means “but” in English. |
| Nora:After this comes a pronoun again, jeg. |
| Gina:You should be familiar with this by now; it means “I”. |
| Nora:Then a verb in present tense elsker. |
| Gina:We looked at it in the vocab explanation section and it means “to love”. |
| Nora:This is followed by a tricky pronoun, ham. |
| Gina:This means “him”. And finally we have the adverb. |
| Nora:Fortsatt. |
| Gina:Which means “still”. We had two pronouns in this sentence, one active subject and one passive object. |
| Nora:While most pronouns that exist in English also exist in Norwegian. |
| Gina:...In Norwegian we tend to use certain pronouns more often than we would in English. |
| Nora:Take for example meg. |
| Gina:Which means “me, myself”. |
| Nora:Or megselv which means “myself” as well. |
| Gina:Or just simply the fact that we have two pronouns that often translate into the same “myself” in English, depending on the context. |
| Nora:You could say Norwegian is a bit more complex when it comes to pronouns. |
| Gina:Let’s have a look at the Norwegian pronouns. Nora will say the pronoun, and I will translate and clarify them. |
| Nora:Jeg |
| Gina:“I” |
| Nora:Du |
| Gina:“You” |
| Nora:Hun: |
| Gina:“She” |
| Nora:Han: |
| Gina:“He” |
| Nora:De: |
| Gina:“They” |
| Nora:Dere |
| Gina:“You” in plural |
| Nora:Meg: |
| Gina:“Me” |
| Nora:Deg: |
| Gina:“You” |
| Nora:Ham |
| Gina:“Him” |
| Nora:Henne |
| Gina:“Her” |
| Nora:Dem |
| Gina:“Them” |
| Nora:Seg: |
| Gina:“Oneself”, “One”, “Himself”, “Herself”, or “Themselves” This one is quite tricky. |
| Nora:Sin or sitt |
| Gina:This is the passive possessive 3rd person. Like... “his”, “hers”, “theirs” |
| Nora:Min: |
| Gina:“My” or “Mine” |
| Nora:Din: |
| Gina:“Your” or “Yours” |
| Nora:Hans |
| Gina:“His” |
| Nora:Hennes |
| Gina:“Hers” |
| Nora:Deres and Demmes |
| Gina:“Yours” in plural, and “Theirs” in plural |
| Nora:Phew! [sigh of relief] That was an exhaustive list! |
| Gina:What we can learn from looking at this, is that at the possessive pronoun part, the differences between English and Norwegian become quite messy. |
| Nora:Firstly, we have the pretty unique seg and sin pronouns in Norwegian, and secondly we have the English “my” and “mine” which are equally as complex. |
| Gina:Going back a bit to sentence structure, let’s look at one particular group of pronouns - the passive ones. |
| Nora:Those are meg, deg, seg, and dere. |
| Gina:The reason we’re not including ham, henne, and dem in this, is that they are regarded as somewhat semi-passive and belong to a group by themselves. |
| Nora:Where seg in this case would correspond to “one”, “him”, “her” or “them” and “one’s”. “his” “her”, or their”. |
| Gina:Yes, it is quite confusing. Let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:Han tok av seg jakken. |
| Gina:“He took off his jacket.” |
| Nora:De hadde ikke kommet seg frem enda. |
| Gina:“They hadn’t gotten themselves there yet.” You might have noticed that didn’t work well in English. It translates better as “They hadn’t arrived yet.”. |
| Nora:The first translation is to make sure you understand why we use seg in that sentence. |
| Gina:That’s right. Next we have. |
| Nora:Hun hadde gjemt godteriet sitt. |
| Gina:“She had hidden away her candy.” |
| Nora:I’m pretty certain one of the most confusing parts of Norwegian is the seg, sin, and sitt pronouns. |
| Gina:I agree. So listeners, take some time to go over these example sentences a few times, and also keep an eye out for the use of seg, sin, and sitt in other lessons as well. And of course, you can always check the lesson notes. |
| Nora:Yes, it’s quite important to learn just exactly where these pronouns are used and in what way. |
Outro |
| Gina:Well, that’s all for this lesson, and for this series. We hope you enjoyed it, and found it useful. |
| Nora:Yes, it was quite a ride. Please leave us a comment on this lesson, and don’t forget to read the lesson notes as well - you can also play the lessons back again to reinforce what you’ve just learned. |
| Gina:Thanks for staying with us for this whole series! We hope to see you again in our next series. |
| Nora:See you again in the future! |
| Gina:Bye! And good luck with your studies! |
| Nora:Ha det bra, og lykke til! |
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