Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Gina:Hi everyone, I’m Gina.
Nora:And I am Nora.
Gina:And welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Beginner Season 1, Lesson 24 - Finding A Little Piece of the United States in Norway. In this lesson, we’ll look at posing longer questions.
Nora:We’ll also be looking at comparative and superlative adjectives.
Gina:So this lesson will be split into two parts. It shouldn’t be too hard though, and we’ll take most of it slowly.
Nora:In our dialogue, Scott is out traveling, again.
Gina:This time he’s going to Lista. He wants to try out his Norwegian skills, however, and decides to ask a stranger on the street.
Nora:And funnily enough, this stranger happens to be our familiar friend Espen.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Gina:Scott certainly does like traveling by air. And to Lista of all places!
Nora:Yeah. Now, for those who don’t know, Lista is quite an interesting place in Norway.
Gina:It’s considered the America of Norway!
Nora:The place looks like an American suburb stuck in the 70s or 80s.
Gina:It’s still quite an interesting place though. And some, if not most of the inhabitants are in fact Americans or of American descent.
Nora:Yes, and it’s a small place, and the airport there is not in operation, so no commercial air traffic goes there anymore.
Gina:The airport is now just used privately by hobby pilots, and others.
Nora:Another aspect of Lista that sort of adds to the Americanism, is the motor club that focuses on old American cars.
Gina:Yeah, this club is probably the sole reason the place looks so American, with all the low cruisers... cruising around.
Nora:(laughs) Probably!
KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES
Gina:Let’s take a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson.
Nora:In this lesson we’ll look at the word måte.
Gina:In the dialogue, it translates as “way”, as in “method” or “technique”.
Nora:However, it can be translated differently depending on the context. An example of another usage is å ta det med måte.
Gina:“To be moderate”.
Nora:So måte would translate as “moderate” or “moderately”.
Gina:The only way to know which meaning it holds, is by looking at the context of the sentence.
Nora:We’ll look at one more common way of using måte. It’s Det var da måte på!
Gina:Which translates as “What sort of manner is that!” Let’s look at a few more examples.
Nora:Det er en smart idé, på en måte.
Gina:“It’s a smart idea, in a way.”
Nora:Det er viktig å ha måte
Gina:“It’s important to be moderate.”
Nora:Next we have the word mulig.
Gina:This word essentially means “possible”.
Nora:It’s quite commonly seen in the phrase Er det mulig?
Gina:“Is it possible?” The usage is closer to “probable” than “possible”. Let’s look at some examples of that.
Nora:Det er mulig vi kommer hjem litt senere.
Gina:“It’s possible/probable that we’ll be home a bit later.”
Nora:Mulig han ankommer tidligere.
Gina:“He’ll probably arrive a bit earlier.” Okay, now onto the grammar.

Lesson focus

Gina:In this lesson, you’ll learn about long questions and comparative and superlative adjectives.
Nora:We’ll be looking at two points.
Gina:First, we have the longer questions and their structures.
Nora:Next we have comparative and superlative adjectives, which is a topic we haven’t discussed much so far.
Gina:But first off, let’s look at a sentence from our dialogue in this lesson. This sentence is quite long and ends in a question, so it ties in with looking at longer questions.
Nora:Hvordan er det jeg kan komme meg fra Oslo til Lista på kjappest mulig måte?
Gina:This question roughly translates as “How do I get from Oslo to Lista in the fastest way possible?” Now let’s break it up and look closely at it.
Nora:First we have hvordan.
Gina:Which is “how” in English. It’s an adverb you should be familiar with from our previous lesson.
Nora:This is followed by er, the present tense of the verb å være.
Gina:Which means “to be”.
Nora:Then we have the pronoun det.
Gina:Meaning “that” or ”it”.
Nora:This is followed by another pronoun jeg.
Gina:Which you should know by now; it means “I”.
Nora:Then we have the modular verb kan.
Gina:This should also be familiar, it means “can”. It’s modulating the verb...
Nora:Komme.
Gina:Which means “come”.
Nora:Then we have a pronoun again, meg
Gina:Which means “Me”. We’ll look at these pronouns in our next lesson.
Nora:Then comes the preposition fra or “from”.
Gina:Then we have the proper noun Oslo, which is followed by another preposition...
Nora:Til.
Gina:Meaning “to” in English.
Nora:Next we have the proper noun Lista. This is followed by another preposition, på.
Gina:Which means “on”.
Nora:Then the adjective kjappest.
Gina:Which means “fastest” in English. We’ll look at how to modify these as well in this lesson.
Nora:Next we have another adjective mulig or “possible”. And finally the noun måte.
Gina:Which means “manner” or “way”.
Nora:Phew, that’s definitely a long question!
Gina:But I’m sure the listeners are keeping up! Let’s look at the structure of it. The first part of this sentence is quite heavy.
Nora:Hvordan er det jeg kan.
Gina:Directly translated, it means “How is it I can”.
Nora:This is a phrase; the first part hvordan er det is quite common.
Gina:Ok, let’s look at a few examples of it.
Nora:Hvordan er det du får til å lage så god mat?
Gina:"How is it you are able to make such good food?" Note that the translation is almost word by word.
Nora:Hvordan er det biler fungerer?
Gina:“How do cars work?” It’s quite a handy phrase, but it also makes the sentence quite complex.
Nora:The next part of the question (jeg kan) komme meg fra Oslo til Lista.
Gina:This part is quite straightforward. Notice however that if we translate this directly, “(I can) get myself from Oslo to Lista.”
Nora:Here, å komme seg is also best thought of as a set phrase. It means “to get oneself...(from A to B)”.
Gina:Let’s look at a few examples of this as well.
Nora:Kom du deg hjem?
Gina:“Did you get home?”
Nora:Hvordan kommer jeg meg dit?
Gina:“How do I get there?” It’s most often seen in questions, as you might have noticed.
Nora:That’s right. Then we have the final part of the sentence, på kjappest mulig måte.
Gina:Which means “In the fastest way/manner possible”. This part is fairly straightforward.
Nora:Except in Norwegian, when you’re using mulig, which means “possible”, it always comes after the first adjective.
Gina:And never after the modified noun or pronoun. So, finally let’s look at some examples of this.
Nora:Jeg kommer fortest mulig dit.
Gina:“I am coming there as fast as possible.”
Nora:Han prøvde å ankomme så tidlig som mulig.
Gina:“He tried to arrive as early as possible.”
Nora:This might take some time to get used to, but don’t worry - try finding sentences with mulig in them, and analyze where the mulig goes in relation to the adjective.
Gina:Right. Next we’ll take a look at comparative and superlative adjectives.
Nora:An English example would be “smart-smarter-smartest.”
Gina:Norwegian is actually not much different from English in this respect.
Nora:In Norwegian, the modification of the same adjective would be, smart, smartere, smartest.
Gina:So basically, we just add an “e” to the middle modification. Let’s look at a few adjectives. I’ll start by saying the adjective in English...
Nora:Then I’ll modify them from the normal adjective, to comparative, then to superlative. Please refer to the lesson notes for more examples!
Gina:Alright let’s start with “Good”.
Nora:Bra (pause) Bedre (pause) Best.
Gina:Now, “Big”
Nora:Stor (pause) Større (pause) Størst.
Gina:Okay!...how about “Small”?
Nora:Liten (pause) Mindre (pause) Minst.
Gina:And how about the color “Green”?
Nora:Grønn (pause) Grønnere (pause) Grønnest.
Gina:And how about “Lazy”?
Nora:Lat (pause) Latere (pause) Latest.
Gina:So you might have noticed that Norwegian has quite a few irregular adjectives, just like English.
Nora:Indeed. While most conform to the -ere, -est, -forms, some adjectives change shape while modified in comparative or superlative form.
Gina:So be a bit careful, and learn the irregulars by heart.

Outro

Gina:Well, that’s all for this lesson.
Nora:Good job! I hope that went well for you listeners as well!
Gina:And remember, you can always read the lesson notes, and leave us comments or questions in the comment section on this page.
Nora:We’ll see you next time for our final lesson in this series!
Gina:Thanks for listening, bye!
Nora:Sees igjen!

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