Norwegian Un-words Unleashed Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Sep 29, 2017 in Uncategorized
U is both one of the nicest Norwegian sounds – and the ”Nor-way” to ”un-do” words. Turn something vanlig [VAANlee] (usual) into something quite u·vanlig [ooVAANlee] (un·usual) – and watch out for False Friends from English! (Or should that be false uvenner – “un-friends?”)
Det er ukult å være uhipp, men noen ganger må du våge å gjøre noe utradisjonelt. (It’s un-cool to be un-hip, but some times you must dare to do something un-traditional. – Okay, I hope that was not too useriøst! 🙂 ) As U can see, most u words work just like in English:
normal > unormal
naturlig (natural) > unaturlig
redd (afraid) > uredd (unafraid)
trygg (safe) > utrygg (unsafe)
sikker (certain) > usikker (uncertain)
klok (wise) > uklok (unwise)
lik (equal) > ulik (unequal)
tørst (thirsty) > utørst (”unthirsty”, not thirsty anymore – yes, there really is a word for that in Norwegian!!)
Please note that all these u words are
• adjectives
• stressed on the u-
(Yup, uvanlig [ooVAANlee] is just as unusual as its meaning here! 🙂
Another odd one out is usynlig [ooSEENlee] – in-visible…)
Un-like (!) English-speakers, Norwegians are un-fans of ”un-verbs”. So, there’s no direct translation of un-do, un-tie, un-leash the dog and so on. (You’d have to re-word it as angre, knytte opp, slippe løs hunden…) The song ”Unbreak My Heart” definitely would have sounded differently in Norwegian! 🙂
U- is a common prefix in nouns, though. This is ”False Friend” territory, so tread carefully – these words usually come pre-packed with a meaning no amout of guessing will reveal:
lykke (bliss, joy) > ulykke (accident)
gress (grass) > ugress (weed [unwanted plants in your garden])
år (year) > uår (bad year)
You can sense the sinister tone, right? :-]
That is also why the phrase Vi er uvenner (”We’re un-friends”) has nothing to do with being real enemies (or having removed one another from Facebook). It simply means ”We’re not friends (any more), there’s bad blood between us”.
![](/images/tlo-devices.png)
Build vocabulary, practice pronunciation, and more with Transparent Language Online. Available anytime, anywhere, on any device.