Learn about some useful Norwegian phrases for when you are meeting friends and need to ask who someone is
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Filip: Hi, I am Filip. |
| Becky: And I’m Becky. Welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Lower Beginner, Season 1, Lesson 22 - A Chance Meeting in Norway. In this lesson you’ll learn some useful phrases for meeting friends, and asking who someone is. |
| Filip: That’s right. We’ll also look at some past tense structures that can come in handy when you’re explaining where you met someone. |
| Becky: The conversation is between Espen and Kjersti who are out on the town, at a bar more specifically. Kjersti unexpectedly meets someone she knows. |
| Filip: Listeners, maybe you’ll remember this person – it’s someone we were introduced to several lessons ago. |
| Becky: Okay, Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Becky: So it’s pretty common for Norwegians to go out drinking on weekends, right? |
| Filip: Yes, and that’s because they usually work weekdays and it’s more common to spend time at home or doing hobbies after work. |
| Becky: But that doesn’t mean that bars and clubs are empty on weekdays. But, they *are* more likely to be crowded on weekends. |
| Filip: Very true. For a Norwegian, the weekend starts after work on Friday. There’s an expression you know - ‘fredagspils’. |
| Becky: Hmmm. I don’t know how you’d translate that...“Friday’s pint”? |
| Filip: Yeah, it refers to the common activity of going out with friends on Friday evening for some beer, or beverages in general. |
| Becky: I see. Well, if you’re curious as to how Norwegians relax and celebrate the weekends, then the “Friday Pint” |
| Filip: or ‘fredagspils’ |
| Becky: ...Just might be the occasion to go to. Now let’s look at the vocabulary. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Becky: Let's have a closer look at the usuage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Filip: Alright, first up is ‘ikke sant.’ It’s a phrase we’ve explained before, but it helps to remind you of its usage from time to time. |
| Becky: That’s because it’s a phrase that Norwegians use a lot. And if you end up understanding this phrase literally then you’ll just become confused. |
| Filip: So, ‘ikke sant’ means... |
| Becky: “Not true”... But it’s used to confirm a statement or an assumption. It’s better to think of it as “isn’t it true?” And it’s best translated as “right?” with that question mark. This is because it resembles that same usage in English. Let’s hear an example. |
| Filip: Du er singel ikke sant? |
| Becky: “You are single, right?” |
| Filip: Now the next word is ‘tilfeldig’. You use it in sentences a bit differently than you would use “by coincidence”, or “by chance” in English. |
| Becky: It’s a single word and you use it as such, on its own. This means you won’t see it coupled with any modifiers, prepositions, articles, or anything of that sort in sentences. It’s very simple to use in sentences where you want to say “by coincidence” or “by chance”. |
| Filip: But make sure you don’t confuse ‘tilfeldig’ with ‘tilfeldigvis’.. ‘tilfeldigvis’ means “co-incidentally” and is used in different situations. Here’s an example of ‘tilfeldig’ - ‘Vi møttes tilfeldig på gaten’. |
| Becky: “We met by chance on the street” |
| Filip: Now, our final word is ‘å møte’. |
| Becky: “To meet”. It can easily be confused with... |
| Filip: ...å møtes... |
| Becky: “To meet together” The only difference is the ‘s’ and that can easily cause confusion. |
| Filip: ‘å møte’ means “to meet”, it’s a direct deliberate action. This is in contrast to ‘å møtes’, which is more indirect and similar to “happen upon each other”. The difference is much like the one between ‘å se’ and ‘å sees’. |
| Becky: “To see” and “to see each other”. We talked about the second one in our last lesson. Now let’s look at an example. |
| Filip: Da møtes vi senere. |
| Becky: “We’ll meet later”. Now let’s move on to the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Becky: In this lesson, we’ll take a look at a few practical things. Let’s start with the easier stuff first. |
| Filip: You might remember that we discussed the VSO questions in our Absolute Beginner series. |
| Becky: In our dialogue, Ole used one of the examples we had from the very first lessons on that. |
| Filip: Er det ikke deg? |
| Becky: “Isn’t it you?” It’s asking for confirmation, just like our flight attendant asked Mark. |
| Filip: Er du Kristian? |
| Becky: “Are you Kristian?” You can see that these phrases essentially have the same structure. |
| Filip: They are built up like this ‘er’ meaning “are” + pronoun + noun, or pronoun. In other terms - Verb Subject Object. |
| Becky: Next, when you want to ask who someone is in Norwegian, you have to use... |
| Filip: ‘Hvem.’ ‘Hvem er Ole’ is a very simple question. What we want to look at here in terms of sentence structure, is how you can change the noun or pronoun. That is, replace ‘Ole’ with ‘det’, for example. You’ll get ‘Hvem er det?’ |
| Becky: It translates to “who is that?” Here you can really substitute any pronoun or personal name, like in our dialogue. |
| Filip: Well any pronoun except ‘den’, which makes it sound weird. Also common nouns wouldn’t make sense as we are literally asking “who” and not “what”. |
| Becky: Let’s look at some examples. |
| Filip: Er det Hans-Olav? |
| Becky: “Is that Hans-Olav?” |
| Filip: Hvem er dere? |
| Becky: “Who are you (guys)?” |
| Filip: Hvem er han der? |
| Becky: “Who is he (that guy) over there?” |
| Filip: So imagine you were asked these questions, and you wanted to answer them. |
| Becky: Let’s also assume that you know who it is and you want to explain where you know the person from. Something that’s very easy about what we’re about to explain, is that everything can be more or less directly translated to English. |
| Filip: Let’s look at this sentence from our dialogue - ‘En jeg møtte på toget for litt siden.’ |
| Becky: In English “Someone I met on the train some time ago”. This sentence is quite dense. There are many things we can change individually, without needing to change the whole sentence. You can change pretty much any part of the sentence, without affecting the rest of it. |
| Filip: Let’s break it down first. ‘En’ means “one” or “someone”. After this comes the pronoun, in this case ‘jeg’ meaning “I”. Then we have the verb ‘møtte’ meaning “met”. This is followed by ‘på toget’. |
| Becky: This means “on the train” |
| Filip: And finally we have ‘for litt siden’ meaning “a while ago”. Now, if we want to change this sentence into one that could answer any of the questions above... |
| Becky: ...then we could change the verb, the pronoun and of course the two last phrases. Let’s look at some examples of how this is done. |
| Filip: Ja, vi møtte han i går |
| Becky: “Yes, we met him yesterday” |
| Filip: Noen dere var ute med for litt siden |
| Becky: “Someone you (guys) were out with some time ago” |
| Filip: En vi traff her om dagen |
| Becky: “Someone we met the other day” |
Outro |
| Becky: Okay, that’s all for this lesson! Make sure to listen again and check the lesson notes. |
| Filip: Takk for at dere hørte på, hade! |
| Becky: See you next time! |
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