Learn how to use long questions and adjective comparatives and superlatives
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| 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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