Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Notes

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Gina:Hi, I am Gina.
Nora:Hei, and I am Nora.
Gina:And welcome back to NorwegianClass101.com. This is Beginner season 1, Lesson 3 - Traveling Around Norway.
Nora:In this lesson you’ll learn more about the past tense. It’s a complex part of the Norwegian language with all the different verb endings.
Gina:Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of them, right? In this lesson, we’ll focus specifically on the phrase “Have already done”.
Nora:That’s right. And we’re introducing a new character, Scott. He is like many of our listeners, a student of Norwegian, and he’s traveling around Norway.
Gina:In the conversation, Scott is trying to get to Ålesund, and asks the Hotel’s concierge if he can check his itinerary. Okay, let's listen to the conversation.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Nora:Traveling in Norway is a subject that often comes up in conversation with foreigners, or when you’re outside Norway.
Gina:Right. Norway is most famous for its fjords, mountains, midnight sun, and northern lights.
Nora:But there is much more to the country than that. Norwegians enjoy nature and Norway’s natural attractions as much as any tourist does...
Gina:Norway also offers vibrant cities with interesting architecture and city life, as well as unique shopping opportunities. It sounds great to me!
Nora:Definitely. Now, the main way to travel in Norway is either by car or train.
Gina:When you’re traveling longer distances within the country, it’s also common to take flights between the larger cities.
Nora:Be sure to not only check out the natural scenery, but also enjoy some of the cities when you visit Norway, listeners. There are lots of interesting people there too.
Gina:Okay, now let’s move on to the vocab.
KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES
Gina:Let’s take a closer look at some of the words and phrases from this lesson. Two of the words in our vocabulary are sort of special when it comes to Norwegian grammar.
Nora:They are what you call “helping verbs.”
Gina:Which means they are contributing to the conjugation of the verbs.
Nora:These are å skulle and å ha.
Gina:The role of these verbs is usually obvious in a sentence, because they are most often paired with other verbs to help conjugate them into a different tense.
Nora:However, on their own they also work as normal verbs.
Gina:Yes. Now let’s look at some examples,
Nora:Firstly, Jeg har en hund
Gina:“I have a dog”. Right, no past tense here. And the next one?
Nora:Mannen skulle hjem
Gina:“The man was going home”. Here there is no future tense. Finally, we have another loanword that might have made you wonder.
Nora:Right, “Booking-nummer” is a hybrid Norwegian and English word.
Gina:The first part booking is an English loan word and comes from the word “booking” - surprise surprise!
Nora:The second word nummer means “number” and is very similar to its English counterpart.
Gina:Booking or for that matter booking-nummer is exactly what it would mean in English, and used in the exact same way.
Nora:An alternative word for booking-nummer would be “reservasjonsnummer”
Gina:But let’s hear some examples of this word.
Nora:“Her er booking-nummeret ditt”
Gina:“Here’s your booking number” And next?
Nora:“Jeg finner ikke booking-nummeret”
Gina:“I can’t find the booking number”. Okay, now onto the grammar.

Lesson focus

Nora:In our previous lesson we looked at simple past tense, and the verb groups strong and weak verbs.
Gina:In this lesson, we’ll move on to the present perfect tense, and see a bit more how they are formed.
Gina:First however, let’s break down the sentence that we’ll be concentrating on from our dialogue.
Nora:It’s Ja, jeg har allerede betalt.
Gina:It translates as “Yes, I have already paid (for a ticket).” Now the last part of the sentence in English is something that would usually be understood from the context of the conversation, and isn’t part of the Norwegian sentence.
Nora:Now we’ll look at the first word in the sentence, and that is the affirmative ja,
Gina:Or “yes” in English. After that, as usual, we have the pronoun...
Nora:...Jeg or “I” in English.
Gina:After the pronoun comes the verb, and this time it is the present perfect tense of...
Nora:Å betale
Gina:Which means “to pay”,
Nora:Har betalt. But wait, in between the helping verb har and betalt we have another adverb allerede
Gina:In English, “Already”. Luckily this happens in English too, and so it shouldn’t be too hard to grasp. When adding adverbs like “already”, “almost”, “probably” and so on, they are put in between the auxiliary verb and the conjugated verb, just like in English.
Nora:So all together we have jeg har allerede betalt,
Gina:Or in English “I have already paid”. It’s a straightforward word-for-word translation that works in English as well.
Nora:Next up, let’s look at the most important part of this sentence, the verb å betale.
Gina:Now if we were to conjugate this verb, it would change to ...?
Nora:Betaler in present tense, betalte in simple past tense, and har betalt in present perfect tense.
Gina:So apart from adding the auxiliary verb, we have also removed the last “e” from the simple past form.
Nora:You may remember that this verb is a weak verb, following the 2nd verb group formula we looked at in the previous lesson.
Gina:By the way, we mentioned this in our previous lesson as well, the first, second, third, and fourth verb group formulas are the same formulas you’ll find when you look up words in...
Nora:The Bokmålsordboka. We’ve put a link in the lesson notes, so please check that out.
Gina:Let’s bring up the diagram we had in the previous lesson and talk a bit about it. This is the time to look at the lesson notes.
Nora:We’ll try to be as clear as we can in case you don’t have the notes, but it’s much better if you can look at the diagram with us.
Gina:Ok, let’s go!
Nora:Alright, the weak verb category 1. Å kaste
Gina:It means “to throw”
Nora:And it changes to kastet or kasta in simple past tense. In present perfect tense we simply add the auxiliary verb har to make up the correct form. Har kastet, Har kasta
Gina:That’s quite simple.
Nora:Next, the weak verb category 2. Å lyse
Gina:In English “to radiate”
Nora:Becomes lyste in simple past tense. Then it loses the last “e” and adds the auxiliary verb har to become har lyst.
Gina:Next we have the weak verb category 3.
Nora:Å leve
Gina:“To live” in English.
Nora:The verbs of this group adds “de” as a tail. Levde in simple past tense. And it loses the last “e” in perfect past tense to become har levd.
Gina:Finally the weak verb category 4. is much like category 3.
Nora:Å nå
Gina:“to reach” in English.
Nora:Becomes nådde adding a “dde”, “d, d, e” in simple past tense, and shedding the last “e” in present perfect tense, har nådd.
Gina:We won’t go over each strong verb, since many of the strong verbs have different endings.
Nora:But you might notice something quite common even in this short list. In present perfect tense you usually adds “tt”, “double t” to the infinitive form.
Gina:But note that this is not the case for every strong verb. Let’s look at the ones we had.
Nora:Å gå
Gina:“To go”
Nora:It becomes har gått. And the next one Å ta
Gina:“To take” in English.
Nora:Becomes har tatt
Gina:And unlike these two...
Nora:Å si
Gina:“To say”
Nora:Becomes har sagt.
Gina:Which is why they are called strong verbs - they don’t necessarily have the same structures.
Nora:In fact, they look an awful lot like irregular verbs. But they are not considered to be irregular.

Outro

Gina:Well, that’s all for this lesson.
Nora:We hope it wasn’t too difficult for you. But remember, you can always listen to the lesson again, and of course check the lesson notes.
Gina:And don’t forget to leave us your feedback in the comments section.
Nora:Ok. See you next time! Ha det

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