Learn a third word which can also sometimes be translated as "I think" or "I believe," although its meaning is closer to the English "I perceive"
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Gina:Hi, I am Gina. |
| Nora:And I am Nora. |
| Gina:And welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Beginner season 1, Lesson 16 - What Do You Think of This Norwegian Proposal? In our previous lesson, we looked at the verbs... |
| Nora:Å tenke which means “to think”, and å tro which means “to believe”. |
| Gina:In this lesson, we are looking at another verb that also translates as “to think”. |
| Nora:We’ll be looking at how to use the verb å synes, “to think” or “to feel like”. |
| Gina:In the conversation, Tore is asking Espen about their colleague Anna’s contribution during the meeting. |
| Nora:You may notice that they use the verb å synes a lot. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina:In Norway, companies are usually not that big. |
| Nora:Quite a lot of companies have small offices with only about 10-30 workers in them. |
| Gina:While the population of Norway is small, the reason for smaller companies and smaller offices is probably also due to the Norwegian culture. |
| Nora:There are only 5 million Norwegians, and while we appreciate independence and solitude, we prefer smaller close-knit communities than larger communities, where the individual often becomes the small fish in a big pond. |
| Gina:A small, close-knit community means good opportunities for building a reputation, and also for better cooperation. |
| Nora:Much of Norwegian culture is also built up around taking care of each other like family. |
| Gina:That’s right, and many people even attribute Norway’s success to that trait. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Gina:Let’s take a closer look at some of the words and phrases from this lesson. We have a passive possessive pronoun in this section that’s a bit different from the ones we have in English. |
| Nora:Yes, it’s Sin or Sitt, which means “one’s”. |
| Gina:In English, masculine and feminine nouns or pronouns are used in conjunction with “his” or “hers”. |
| Nora:And this is mostly the case in Norwegian as well. |
| Gina:But in Norwegian, we have a special passive pronoun that we use to denote ownership by the subject in the sentence. |
| Nora:This pronoun is “seg”. As we said, it doesn’t have an English equivalent, and we won’t go into this one now. |
| Gina:Instead we’ll look at the passive possessive conjugation of this, which is sin. This is masculine or feminine, and the neuter version is sitt. |
| Nora:You use this pronoun when you want to refer to something that the subject of the sentence owns. |
| Gina:In English, this pronoun would most often translate to its gender equivalent possessive pronoun “his”, “hers”, “its”, etc. |
| Nora:But you’ll notice that there’s room for misinterpretation here. |
| Gina:Take for example a sentence like “He rode his bike”. |
| Nora:Yeah, this can have 2 interpretations. |
| Gina:Either “He rode his own bike” or “he rode his (some other guy’s) bike”. In Norwegian, these two sentences would be different. |
| Nora:We have Han syklet på sykkelen sin. |
| Gina:“He rode his own bike” |
| Nora:Han syklet på sykkelen hans. |
| Gina:“He rode another guy’s bike”. Here the final pronoun changes depending on the context of the sentence. |
| Nora:Har katten fått maten sin? |
| Gina:“Has the cat had its food?” |
| Nora:Tok hun med seg sekken sin? |
| Gina:“Did she bring her bag with her?” |
| Nora:De har et piano i huset sitt. |
| Gina:“They have a piano in their house.” Okay, now onto the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
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| Gina:In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use the verb |
| Nora:å synes. In our previous lesson we looked at the words å tenke and å tro. |
| Gina:They both translate as “to think” or “to believe” and are both interchangeable like their English counterparts, at least in some situations. |
| Nora:In this lesson we’ll look at a third word that works as an alternative to these two, å synes |
| Gina:Which means “to perceive”. |
| Nora:As you saw in our dialogue, å synes is most often translated as “to think”. |
| Gina:To illustrate that, let’s take a look at the sentence in our dialogue, and break it down. |
| Nora:Jeg syns hun hadde et sterkt bidrag. |
| Gina:This translates roughly as “I think she had a great contribution.” Let’s break this down. |
| Nora:First we have the familiar pronoun jeg... |
| Gina:Or “I” in English. After this is the verb we are talking about in this lesson... |
| Nora:In present tense syns from å synes, |
| Gina:Which means “to perceive”. |
| Nora:This is followed by the pronoun hun. |
| Gina:Or “she”. Then we have a simple past tense of the verb... |
| Nora:Å ha, its past tense is hadde. Or “to have”. |
| Gina:Then comes an article, followed by an adjective, and finally the noun the article belongs to. |
| Nora:Et sterkt bidrag. |
| Gina:This is the common way to add adjectives to nouns. |
| Nora:Also notice that the noun is neuter gender, so the article et is the neuter gender article. |
| Gina:Now, this sentence is pretty straightforward, just the way it could be phrased in English. |
| Nora:Of course, the English translation could be phrased more naturally. |
| Gina:But we can agree that for illustration purposes it does its job. |
| Nora:Ok, now back to å synes. |
| Gina:Although it translates as “to perceive” and can be used in sentences where you use “perceive” in English... |
| Nora:...The more common and frequent usage is the way you’d use “to think”, as in having an opinion, in English. |
| Gina:This might be a bit confusing, so try to think of it this way. “To think” as in having an opinion is the same as “perceiving” a matter, in a way. |
| Nora:This is the logic behind the usage of this word in Norwegian. |
| Gina:So let’s look at a few sentences and see how this works. |
| Nora:Jeg syns det er en dårlig idé. |
| Gina:"I think that’s a bad idea." |
| Nora:Han syntes hunden så syk ut. |
| Gina:“He thought the dog looked sick.” |
| Nora:Here we had examples of how å synes is used as “to think”. |
| Gina:Notice also how we can replace “to think” with “to perceive” in the same sentences, for example. “He perceived the dog looked sick”. |
| Nora:This is not all there is to this word, however. “to perceive” can mean quite a lot. |
| Gina:Let’s look at how |
| Nora:å synse |
| Gina:would be used as “to feel” in English. |
| Nora:Hun syntes synd på barnet. |
| Gina:“She felt sorry for the child.” |
| Nora:Jeg syns du er urettferdig. |
| Gina:“I feel like you’re being unfair.” |
| Nora:By now you must be seeing how magical this word is! |
| Gina:One word in Norwegian, but so many in English! Let’s look at a few more. |
| Nora:Gutten kunne synes gjennom tåken. |
| Gina:“The boy was visible through the fog.” |
| Nora:Oppgaven syntes umulig.” |
| Gina:“The task seemed impossible.” |
Outro |
| Gina:And that’s all for this lesson! Make sure you check the lesson notes, and leave a comment on the lesson page! |
| Nora:See you next time! |
| Gina:Thanks for listening, bye! |
| Nora:Ha det! |
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