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Norwegian summer phrases Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jul 31, 2015
Underveis (on the way) Unnskyld… (Excuse me…) Kan du vise oss veien til Kongeparken? (Could you show us the way to the Kongeparken amusement park?) Hvor ligger den nærmeste campingplassen? (Where is the nearest camping site?) Hvor lang tid tar det å kjøre til Bodø? (How long time will it take to drive to Bodø?)…
Summer Cleaning Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jun 30, 2015
Da er det på tide med litt rengjøring! (Then it’s time for some cleaning!) If you’re anything like me, you’d rather vente til neste dag (wait until the next day). The støv (dust) and skitt [shit] (dirt), unfortunately, don’t go on holiday… 🙁 Here are some words and phrases to help you get that kost…
Remember the words you forget Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on May 13, 2015
Together with my students at a language course, I recently found a great way of activating det passive ordforrådet (the passive vocabulary). I wrote a simple word on tavlen (the blackboard), asking my students to find its motsetning (opposite). Then we picked another word, found its ”opposite”, and the game went on and on and…
Going short Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Mar 31, 2015
OMG! OK, it’s forkorting (abbreviation) time. LOL. 🙂 BTW, YOLO, so let’s get down to it: osv. = og så videre = ”and so further” = etc.: Vi må betale eiendomsskatt osv. (We’ve got to pay property tax etc.) osb. = og så bortetter = osv. in Nynorsk Norwegian. f.eks. = for eksempel = for example: Vil du…
Big and Small Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Feb 28, 2015
The Norwegian words for ’big’ and ’small’ are a bit more complex than your average adjective. Let’s start with stor, which covers most instances where you’d use the words big or large in English: • en stor tanke (a big thought) – den store tanken (the big thought) – tanken er stor (the thought is…
Norwegian pick-up lines Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Feb 14, 2015
It’s that time of year again! Thanks to the Norwegians’ great kjærlighet [”SHARE”-leeghet] for American traditions, many par (couples) in the country are buying hverandre [vare-ANDreh] (each other) blomster (flowers), sjokolade [SHOCK-oh-lahdeh], kinobilletter (cinema tickets) and what not to celebrate Valentinsdagen. But what about all those people who haven’t got a kjæreste (girlfriend/boyfriend), an elsker…
Talking about the future Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jan 8, 2015
2015 is upon us, so I thought it would be a great idea to look a bit ahead – grammatically speaking, that is! As you may be aware, verbs in Spanish and Esperanto and many other languages have a distinct future tense (yo cantaré/mi kantos = I’ll sing). In English, we’ve got to make compound…