Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

Intro

Hi everybody! Anette here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Norwegian questions.
The Question
The question for this lesson is… How do I use på and i for geographical locations?
Explanation
Norwegian has a lot of prepositions, and some of them are a little tricky to use, especially på and i when it comes to places.
Let’s go over the main rule for using på and i. You use på for islands or astronomical objects like the moon or Mars. You use i for countries, bigger cities and states.
Let’s do some examples so you can learn how to use på and i correctly.
Let’s use the sentence, Han er på månen, meaning “He’s on the moon.” Here, we’re talking about an astronomical object, so we use på. Another example would be, Tror du det finnes liv på Mars? This means “Do you think there's life on Mars?”
Now, let’s do some examples with i.
Consider Hun studerer i London, meaning “She studies in London,” and
Jeg bor i Norge, “I live in Norway.” In these sentences, the objects are either a big city or a country, so we need the preposition i.
Here’s a tricky one. Iceland is a country, but also an island, so how would you say, “I live in Iceland?” We say, Jeg bor på Island, using på. But, for the sentence, “I live in Australia,” even though Australia is an island, we use i. Jeg bor i Australia. Unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules for these situations, so you just have to memorize which countries that are also islands use på and which ones use i.

Outro

How was this lesson? Pretty interesting right?
Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them!
Hade! Vi sees senere!
Bye. See you later!

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