Learn the difference between the perfect and preterite tense in Norwegian
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Intro |
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| Michael: What is the difference between the present perfect and preterite tense in Norwegian? |
| Inger: And when is one used over the other? |
| Michael: At NorwegianClass101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine a scenario where Trygve Tvedt has lost his keys and he tells his neighbor, Mark Lee, about his problem. He says, "I have lost my keys." |
| Trygve: Jeg har mistet nøklene mine. |
| Dialogue |
| Trygve: Jeg har mistet nøklene mine. |
| Mark: Jeg mistet også nøklene mine en gang. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Trygve: Jeg har mistet nøklene mine. |
| Michael: "I have lost my keys." |
| Mark: Jeg mistet også nøklene mine en gang. |
| Michael: "I lost my keys once too." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In this lesson, you will be learning about the difference between the perfect and preterite tenses in Norwegian and when to use which one. |
| Michael: To begin with, let’s quickly talk about how we form these tenses in English. Here’s an example of the perfect tense in English: "I have finished eating." This sentence, like all perfect tense sentences, refers to an action or event that has occurred at an unspecified time in the past. We don’t know when this person ate. We do know, however, that they have finished eating. This completion of the action or event is why it is called the perfect tense. Conversely, the action in the preterite tense is incomplete, as you can hear in the example, "I was reading." |
| Inger: In Norwegian, the word for the perfect tense is perfektum, |
| Michael: and in order to construct a perfect tense sentence in Norwegian, you will need the auxiliary verb: |
| Inger: har, |
| Michael: which means "have" or "has." You will also need to add a suffix to the verb, but we will say more about that later. As you can tell, this is very similar to the English method for constructing the perfect tense. |
| Michael: If you want to form a sentence in the perfect tense in Norwegian, you will need to add a suffix to the verb. The suffix you use will depend on which group the verb belongs to. As mentioned earlier, we will say more about verb suffixes soon. We’ll also be talking about the numerous irregular verbs, but we won’t be going into too much detail because the only way to get to know those, really, is to memorize them. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Michael: In order to examine these two tenses more closely, let’s have another look at the dialogue. |
| Do you remember how Trygve Tvedt said "I have lost my keys?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Inger as Trygve Tvedt: Jeg har mistet nøklene mine. |
| Michael: In this sentence, it is not clear when he lost his keys, but we can say that the action in this sentence has been concluded. For this reason, we know that Trygve is using the present perfect tense. In order to form the present perfect, he used the auxiliary verb |
| Inger: har |
| Michael: which means "have." It was mentioned before that the perfect form always requires this verb, just as it does in English. We also mentioned that the verb would require a suffix in order to form the past participle. Let’s see how Trygve did this. The stem of this verb is "to lose," or, in Norwegian: |
| Inger: miste. |
| Michael: Trygve added a "T" to the end of the verb because that is what one does with most verbs in order to form the past participle in the Norwegian perfect tense. The verb then sounds like this: |
| Inger: mistet. |
| Michael: It’s necessary to point out that, even if one does form a past participle by adding a "T" to the end of the verb, it’s not always that simple. Sometimes, you have to add or remove other letters as well. If we look at the Norwegian verb for "to sing," or |
| Inger: å synge, |
| Michael: this verb stem requires us to change the vowel as well as add the "T" at the end because it is an irregular verb. We will talk about this verb a little later again, when we look at irregular verbs in the preterite tense. The past participle sounds like this: |
| Inger: har sunget |
| Michael: Sometimes, as was mentioned moments ago, it’s necessary to remove a letter as well. Let’s consider the verb stem: |
| Inger: å løpe. |
| Michael: This means "to run" and, in order to form the past participle, we must use our auxiliary verb again as well as remove the final "E" from the word before attaching the "T" to the end. It will then sound like this: |
| Inger: har løpt |
| Michael: That said, the general rule is to add the "T" at the end and, as long as you know that and remember it, everything else will come a little easier. |
| [Recall 2] |
| Michael: And now, in order to examine the preterite tense. |
| Inger: The word for the preterite tense in Norwegian is preteritum. |
| Michael: Let’s have a closer look at how Mark Lee answered, "I lost my keys once too." |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Inger as Mark Lee: Jeg mistet også nøklene mine en gang. |
| Michael: You will notice that Mark has also used a "T" at the end of the verb in order to form the past participle. This is not always the case in the preterite though. Very often, the past participle is a "T-E," such as in this sentence, meaning: "He read yesterday." |
| Inger: Han leste i går. |
| Michael: The verb in that sentence is |
| Inger: leste |
| Michael: or "read," and the infinitive of the same verb is |
| Inger: å lese |
| Michael: or "to read." There are other ways to form the past participle of the verb in the preterite tense and we will look at those a bit later. All you need is the past participle of the verb in order to form the preterite tense in Norwegian, but you will notice that, in both of our examples, there was a mention of time. Mark used the word "once" or |
| Inger: en gang |
| Michael: and, in the other sentence, the word "yesterday" or |
| Inger: i går, |
| Michael: was used. This is because, in Norwegian, it is also necessary to refer to the time in some way in the preterite tense. We’ll talk about these two tenses in more detail shortly. Let’s quickly review what we’ve learned so far. |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: In this lesson, so far, you have learned that the perfect tense in Norwegian is called |
| Inger: perfektum. |
| Michael: It is formed by using the auxiliary verb |
| Inger: har |
| Michael: and by adding the suffix |
| Inger: -t |
| Michael: at the end of the verb stem. It works in a similar way to the English present perfect tense. |
| The preterite tense also requires a suffix attached to the verb stem, but there are several of these. Furthermore, in order to form the preterite tense, the time must be mentioned. But it is not formed quite like the English preterite tense. We’ll say more about that in a moment, after a bit of dialogue practice. |
| Expansion |
| Inger: Both the perfektum and the preteritum tenses are forms of the past tense in Norwegian. |
| Michael: The former resembles the English present perfect in terms of structure, but the latter does not resemble the structure of the preterite tense in English. In fact, there is no separate preterite tense in Norwegian. But, then, you might ask, what have you been talking about all through this lesson? |
| Inger: Well, the fact is that the preteritum in Norwegian is used for what we call the preterite tense in English, as well as the simple past. |
| Michael: The same structure is used to form both tenses. It is in this sense that, what we call the preterite tense in English |
| Inger: is the preteritum in Norwegian. |
| Michael: Now, it was mentioned earlier that we would talk a little more about the verb suffixes for the preterite tense, so let’s look at those quickly. We’ll start with the regular verbs, for which there are four suffixes. The first is one we’ve already discussed: |
| Inger: -te |
| Michael: If the verb stem is, for instance, a word like "to shine" or |
| Inger: å lyse, |
| Michael: then the preterite form is |
| Inger: lyste. |
| Michael: Another suffix that is used with regular verbs in the preterite tense is |
| Inger: -et. |
| Michael: Let’s take the verb stem |
| Inger: å kaste, |
| Michael: which means "to throw," and add this suffix to it. We then end up with: |
| Inger: kastet. |
| Michael: If we have the verb stem |
| Inger: å leve, |
| Michael: we add the third suffix to it, which is |
| Inger: -de, |
| Michael: which is spelled "D-E." The verb we end up with is: |
| Inger: levde. |
| Michael: And, finally, there is the suffix |
| Inger: -dde. |
| Michael: This is spelled "D-D-E," and we can attach it to a verb stem, like |
| Inger: å bo, |
| Michael: meaning "to live." We then end up with |
| Inger: bodde. |
| Michael: When it comes to irregular verbs, you will have to spend some time simply memorizing as many of them as you can. With irregular verbs, there is no suffix added to the verb stem. Instead, the vowel of the verb stem is changed. |
| Inger: For example, take the verb stem å synge, |
| Michael: meaning, "to sing," and, with this verb stem, we have to change the vowel in order to form the past participle, which is |
| Inger: sang. |
| Michael: Now that you know a bit more about how to form the perfect and preterite tenses in Norwegian, you will find that your ability to communicate effectively in the language has improved somewhat. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We’re here to answer them! |
| Inger: Ha det! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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