Norwegian Language Blog

When you want to tell the world where you are, prepositions come handy: I’m in the garage; we’re on the mountain. (And so it is in Norwegian: Jeg er i garasjen; vi er på fjellet.) However, very often some kind of adverb can do the job as well: I’m home; we’re out. Jeg er hjemme; vi er ute.

You’ll notice that a lot of these locational adverbs end in -e in Norwegian. In addition to hjemme [YEMMeh] and ute [OOteh], you’ve got:

- inne (in, inside), as in Hun sitter inne i stua (she’s sitting in the living-room)

- oppe (up), as in Vi var oppe hele natta (We stayed up all night)

- nede (down), as in De traff hverandre nede i dalen (They met/hit each other down in the valley)

- borte (away), as in Hvorfor er du alltid borte når jeg er hjemme? (Why’re you always gone when I’m at home?)

- fremme (in front), as in Det er jeg som skal sitte fremme i bilen (It is I who’s supposed to sit in the front of the car) [this word can also be spelt framme]

But what if you wanted to say you were going home rather than being home? In Norwegian there’s a really nice trick you can use to tweak the meaning of the above words into something more directional: You just remove the final -e:

- Gå hjem! (Go home!)

- Nå må dere komme ut! (Now you must come out(side)!)

- Hun går inn i stua (She’s going into the living-room)

- Han står opp (He gets up)

- De går lenger ned i dalen (They go further down the valley)

- Han løp bort så fort han kunne (He ran away as fast as he could)

- Kom frem! (Come forth!)

Neat, huh?

Norsk er lett å stave. Norwegian is easy to spell. For learners being used to the quirks of English spelling (why on earth is ”weemen” spelt with an o?), the Norwegian system may seem like a godsend: You write things more or less like they sound: sjåfør (chauffeur), miljø (milieu; environment). Fortunately, there are still some utfordringer (challenges) for that geeky part of your hjerne (brain). Among them are

The sj sound and the kj sound

• Sj sounds like the English sh of shoe: sju (”shoo”, seven).
• Kj sounds like the h- of huge (as pronounced in England, that is, ”hyuge”): kjære (”hyare”, dear). The exact sound doesn’t really exist in English, but it’s typical of German: Ich liebe dich.

The two sounds are sometimes confused, so that the names Kjell and Shell (the oil company) are both pronounced ”Sjell”. Unless you really want to upset educated Norwegians, I wouldn’t recommend that you copy this ”trend”.

The bad things is that these two sounds are written in several different ways, so you really have to memorize the spelling of each word where one of them occurs:

• The sj sound can be written as:
  • sj: sjokolade (chocolate)
  • skj: skjold (shield)
  • sk: ski (”shee”, skis)
  • g in a couple of words of French origin: geni (”shehNEE”, genious)
  • j in a couple of words of French origin: journalist (”shoornaLIST”)
• The kj sound can be written as:
  • kj: kjeks (biscuit)
  • k: kylling (chicken)

There is a bit of logic here: The letter j does not normally appear in front of i or y (save in a few words such as jypling, greenhorn, and sjiraff, giraffe). And the letter k and the combo sk usually have their normal, ”hard” pronunciation in front of vowels other than i or y, such as skole (”SKOHleh”, school) and Kari [KAHree]. So, to indicate a ”soft” pronunciation in such words, a j is inserted: skjold [sholl], Kjartan [HYARtan]. In front of i and y these sounds are naturally ”soft”, so the j would be superfluos: kino [”HYEE-noh”, cinema), skyte (”SHEE-teh”, to shoot).

A similar system is used for the letter g. It is pronounced ”y-” (as in yet) in front of i and y, but ”g-” everywhere else – unless it is followed by a j. So, gi (give), gyte (spawn) and gjøre (do) all start with the same sound as English yellow.

If this seems confusing, maybe this little verse, which I learnt at school, will help:

I-en og y-en
gikk på byen
så møtte de j-en
men ville ikke se’en.

The I and the Y
went to town
then they met the J
but didn’t want to see ’im.

In terms of language, jumping into the FaceBook era has been easy for Norwegian-speakers: ’to like’ is å like [aw LEEkeh]!

• Liker du brunost? (Do you like Norwegian brown cheese?)
• Jeg liker ikke ost i det hele tatt. (I don’t like cheese at all.)
• Men jeg liker deg. (But I like you.)

This can also be used in front of other verbs, as in ’We like playing chess’: Vi liker å spille sjakk. As there are no real ing-forms in Norwegian, only the infinitive or to-form is used (”We like to play chess”). In order to make it stronger, the words veldig godt (very good) are added:

• Jeg liker ham veldig godt. (I like him a lot.)
• Hun likte veldig godt å kjøre bil. (She liked very much driving a car)

Other ways of liking

If you’re really fond of someone, a nice construction to use is å være glad i – literally ”to be happy in”.

• Er du glad i meg, mamma? (Do you like/love me, mum?)
• De er veldig glade i hverandre. (They’re very fond of each other)
• Han var ikke så glad i kake. (He wasn’t a big fan of cakes.)

The Norwegian equivalent of English ’to love’ is å elske. Please note that this construction is much more used in (American) English than in Norwegian! In a situation where an American would use the word ”love”, a Norwegian most often talks about ”liking” instead – unless it really is passionate love in the romantic sense!

• Jeg elsker fjellturer. (I love mountain hikes.)
• Jeg elsker deg. (I love you.)

A bit of slang

Finally, there is the verb å digge. It comes straight from English to dig, and is a very slangy thing to say:

• Hun digger Bruce Springsteen. (She digs [likes] Bruce Springsteen.)

This word was very prominent in ”Kursiv” (”Italics”), a 1997 hit song by the pop group Trang Fødsel (”Narrow Birth”):

The song’s about some very rich people, who
digger, digger, digger deres jetset-liv (love, love, love their jet-set life)… Are you able to crack the lyrics?