Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Gina:Hi, I am Gina.
Nora:And I am Nora.
Gina:And welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Beginner, season 1, Lesson 17 - Getting from A to B in Norway
Nora:In this lesson you’ll learn how to use the conjunction eller which means “or”.
Nora:We’ll also look at using pauses in Norwegian sentences.
Gina:That also ties into looking at longer sentences and how they are built.
Nora:The conversation is between Scott and the Concierge at his hotel.
Gina:Scott is out traveling again. He is asking the concierge at the hotel because he isn’t entirely sure how to go.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Gina:So it’s quite common to use domestic flights to travel between certain parts of Norway.
Nora:That’s right. It’s not always cheapest to go by car or train either.
Gina:Especially when you consider the time it takes to either drive the car from A to B, or sit on the train.
Nora:It takes more than a day to drive from the bottom part of Norway to the furthest north place, Alta. It’s such a long drive that few people actually attempt it.
Gina:And because certain airlines offer such cheap tickets, there’s almost no point.
Nora:Some common intercity flights are Oslo to Bergen, Oslo to Trondheim, Oslo to Stavanger and Oslo to Longyearbyen.
Gina:What’s that final place you mentioned there?
Nora:Oh, Longyearbyen is the main settlement in Svalbard. It even has a town hall and a university.
Gina:Wow, I need to go there the next time I visit Norway.
Nora:Yeah, be careful though - it’s the only place in Norway where polar bears live.
Gina:Oh, cool!
Nora:“Polar bear” in Norwegian is “isbjørn”, by the way.
Gina:Good to know!
KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES
Gina:Let’s take a closer look at some of the words and phrases from this lesson.
Nora:We’ll start with the adjective kjapp.
Gina:It means “swift” or “quick”.
Nora:It’s not used that often by Norwegians anymore. Instead, people tend to use the adjective rask.
Gina:Which means “fast” and is a catch-all for “swift”, “quick”, “fast” and “speedy”.
Nora:But you might hear kjapp or even the word kvikk used sometimes.
Gina:The latter sounds like and translates to “quick”. When it comes to using these words, I recommend you use variations, since they make your language a bit more colorful and natural.
Nora:The distinction between them is a lot like the English equivalents, so it shouldn’t be too hard to use them. kjapp is “swift”, kvikk is “quick”, and rask is “fast”.
Gina:Let’s hear some examples of them in context as well.
Nora:Hvor raskt kjører denne bilen?
Gina:“How fast can this car go?”
Nora:Han er kvikk til å løpe og hjemme seg.
Gina:“He is quick to run and hide.”
Nora:Det gjelder å være kjapp
Gina:“It’s essential to be swift.”
Nora:The next word is sikker.
Gina:It means “secure” or “confident”, but it’s context-dependent.
Nora:Sikker is most commonly used in the context of security.
Gina:However, just like the word “confident”, it means that they are “sure” or “feel secure” when they are “confident”.
Nora:The word “self-confident” also contains sikker in Norwegian - it’s selvsikker.
Gina:Let’s look at some examples of this as well.
Nora:Hvor sikker er denne båten?
Gina:“How secure or safe is this boat?”
Nora:Jeg er sikker på at han er skyldig.
Gina:“I am confident that he is guilty.” Good! Okay, now onto the grammar.

Lesson focus

Nora:In this lesson, you’ll learn about using the word eller, as well as pauses in longer sentences.
Gina:Let’s start with eller. It’s not too hard and doesn’t need too much explanation. But first we’ll look at a sentence from our dialogue, and break it down.
Nora:Tog eller fly er nok kjappest.
Gina:This translates roughly as “Going by train or air is probably fastest.” Now let’s break this down.
Nora:First we have the noun Tog.
Gina:It means “train”.
Nora:This is followed by the conjunction eller or “or” in English.
Gina:This is the word we’ll be looking at in this lesson.
Nora:Next we have the noun, fly.
Gina:It means “Plane”, or “flight”.
Nora:Then we have the verb er, a present tense of å være
Gina:Which means “to be”. Then we have the adverb...
Nora:Nok.
Gina:Which means “probably”. And finally, the conjugated adjective.
Nora:Kjappest, from kjapp. It translates as “fast”, or “swift” as we learned earlier.
Gina:This sentence is quite simple. In fact translating it word by word to English wouldn’t make much sense, since English often requires more elaborate grammar to make sense.
Nora:Right, in Norwegian however, the sentences can often be quite simple. Next we have the word eller from the sentence. It is used to compare the two alternatives.
Gina:There are no extra words needed or any complicated grammar here. You simply put it in between the words you want to compare, like English “train” or “car”.
Nora:For example. Hus eller hytte.
Gina:This means “house or cottage”.
Nora:Sliten eller trøtt.
Gina:Which means “tired or sleepy”. The same formula also works for longer sentences. Let’s look at some examples.
Nora:Har du vært hjemme i ferien eller ute og reist?
Gina:"Have you been home during the vacation or out traveling?"
Nora:Hun visste ikke om hun likte maten eller hatet den.
Gina:“She didn’t know whether she liked the food or hated it.”
Nora:There is also one more use for eller, which isn’t that common in English.
Gina:What’s that?
Nora:It is putting the eller at the end of a yes/no question.
Gina:In Norwegian, this is quite common when expressing doubt whether the answer will be yes.
Nora:Liker du fisk eller?
Gina:“Do you like fish(..or not)?
Nora:Skulle vi gå på kino eller?
Gina:“Were we going to the cinema or?”
Nora:Good!
Gina:Now let’s look at some longer sentences, and where to put pauses.
Nora:Again, this works much like English, but let’s look at it to get a clear idea of how to form longer sentences in Norwegian.
Gina:Let’s take a sentence from our dialogue.
Nora:Jeg tenkte meg til Skagen, men jeg er ikke helt sikker på hvordan jeg skal komme meg dit.
Gina:This translates as “I am planning to go to Skagen, but I am not entirely sure how to get there.”
Nora:Now, the first part of this sentence is everything that comes before the comma.
Gina:...And usually this is spoken without a pause.
Nora:The next part goes until the word helt.
Gina:Which means “entirely”. Here the stress is usually put on the word helt, which is the final word in this part, or the word is dragged out to emphasize it.
Nora:Then finally, the last part of the sentence.
Gina:Although this is quite similar to the way you’d speak the sentence in English, it’s not entirely similar.
Nora:Most often, Norwegians put stress on the sentence they want to emphasize, or drag it out in order to get their point across.
Gina:Let’s look at a few more examples, and please emphasize the pronunciation to make it clearer.
Nora:Ok. Jeg tenkte meg ut i båten i kveld, vil du bli med?
Gina:“I thought I’d take a ride with the boat tonight, would you like to join?”
Nora:Her har du beviset på at jeg er helt uskyldig i saken.
Gina:“Here you have the evidence that I am completely not guilty in this trial.”

Outro

Gina:That’s all for this lesson.
Nora:Make sure you listen again, especially to the last part, because proper pauses can be tricky. And they’re very important.
Gina:And make sure you check the lesson notes for more information.
Nora:Feel free to leave us a comment as well. See you next time!
Gina:Thanks for listening, bye!
Nora:Ha det!

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