Learn more about using the Norwegian word som
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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 8 - Celebrity Spotting in Norway. In this lesson, you’ll continue to learn about the usages of the word “som”. |
| Nora:As we’ve said, “som” doesn’t have any good direct English equivalents, so that’s why we are covering it. |
| Gina:Even though it can mean something like “that” or “like”, that’s not how it’s used in Norwegian. |
| Nora:The conversation is between Scott and a stranger on the street. |
| Gina:The stranger looks a lot like an actor from a certain recent movie. Okay, let's listen to the conversation. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Gina:While Norwegian movies haven’t really broken through internationally, a few movies are being screened overseas, including at Cannes film festival. |
| Nora:That’s right, a few movies have made it overseas. One of them was the recent Oscar nominated, Kon Tiki. |
| Gina:It was the highest grossing Norwegian film of 2012 and the most expensive Norwegian movie of all time. |
| Nora:Yeah, it had impressive visual effects and shots that made it look like a Hollywood-quality movie! |
| Gina:I hear there’s some great acting too. |
| Nora:But how it does overseas remains to be seen. Some are skeptical, because the adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, who is the subject of the movie, is hardly known outside of Norway. |
| Gina:Let’s hope it does well! 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. |
| Nora:“Å spørre i vei” literally translates as ... |
| Gina:“To ask away”. It’s very similar to the English phrase of the same origin. |
| Nora:The last part of the phrase “i vei” means “away” and can be used in other scenarios, like “å spise i vei” |
| Gina:“to eat away (at something)”. Let’s look at some examples. |
| Nora:“Om du er klar så må du bare spørre i vei!” |
| Gina:“If you are ready, then just ask away!” |
| Nora:“Jeg er forberedt, spørr i vei!” |
| Gina:“I am prepared, fire away!” Try to invent some other ones yourselves, listeners! Okay. Next we have an interjection we have looked at before. |
| Nora:“Åja.” |
| Gina:It’s used more to add a mood to a sentence so it can be translated into many similar English interjections. Like “oh”, “yes” or “oh yeah”. |
| Nora:Åja usually implies a small revelation on the speaker’s part, as in “oh I see”. |
| Gina:Let’s look at some examples of this as well. |
| Nora:“Åja, så det er der du er” |
| Gina:“Oh, so that’s where you are” |
| Nora:“Åja, jeg fant ikke ut svaret med en gang” |
| Gina:“Oh yeah, I couldn’t figure out the answer at first”. Okay, now onto the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gina:In this lesson, you’ll learn more about the usage of the word som. |
| Nora:In our previous lesson, we learned how to use som in conjunction with virker, ser ut, and høres ut. |
| Gina:What som ended up becoming in these phrases was the word “like”. |
| Nora:But it’s best to think of these, virker som, ser ut som, and høres ut som, as set phrases that way. |
| Gina:But to understand this lesson’s grammar point, it’s important to understand how English works. |
| Nora:And what the difference between Norwegian and English is. |
| Gina:Before we start to explain som in depth in this lesson, let’s break down our dialogue sentence so that we can understand it a bit better. |
| Nora:Er det du som spiller i den Kon-Tiki filmen? |
| Gina:This translates roughly as “Are you the guy in the Kon-Tiki movie?” However, it translates word for word like this - “Is it you who plays in that Kon-Tiki movie?” |
| Nora:So let’s look at our first word, er |
| Gina:This is the present tense of the verb |
| Nora:Å være |
| Gina:Or “to be” in English. |
| Nora:After this we have det |
| Gina:Which means “That/it” in English. |
| Nora:Next we have the pronoun du |
| Gina:Which means “You”. |
| Nora:Then we have som. |
| Gina:Here it translates as “who”. Next is the verb |
| Nora:Spiller, which is the present tense of “å spille” |
| Gina:“To play/to act”. |
| Nora:Then we have the preposition i |
| Gina:Which means “in”. |
| Nora:After this, we have den or “that” in English. This is the neuter gender pronoun of den, by the way. |
| Gina:Then we have the movie name Kon-Tiki. |
| Nora:And finally the definite noun filmen |
| Gina:Meaning “Film/movie”. |
| Nora:Er det du som spiller i den Kon-Tiki filmen? |
| Gina:This question is, as you might remember from earlier series a Verb-Subject-Object question, almost like confirming a notion. |
| Nora:Of course, what we’ll focus on though is not the Verb-Subject-Object questions but the word som. |
| Gina:Now som in the earlier sentence meant “who” or “whom”. In English, “who” or “whom” could have been substituted with “that” in the same sentence. |
| Nora:In fact, English makes use of the adverb “who” more often than “that” in these scenarios. |
| Gina:This makes no sense coming from the outside where “who” and “that” could be the same word. |
| Nora:Just like Norwegian. |
| Gina:What we are trying to get at here, is that English can be quite complex when it comes to whether to use “who” or “that”. |
| Nora:In Norwegian, however, there is only one word, som. |
| Gina:So whenever you see som alone in a sentence, it means either “who” or “that”. |
| Nora:A more technical explanation would be that som is connecting the subject after it with the action in before it. |
| Gina:Let’s look at some examples of this. |
| Nora:Det er datamaskinen som lager så mye lyd |
| Gina:"It’s the computer that’s making all that noise" |
| Nora:Kan du fortelle meg hvem som gjorde dette? |
| Gina:“Can you tell me who (that) did this?” |
| Nora:Jeg liker alt som er gult |
| Gina:“I like everything that’s yellow” |
| Nora:Great! That wasn’t too hard was it? So som is literally either the equivalent of “who”, “that”, or in certain set phrases “like”. It’s a flexible word and you should pay attention to any sentences you discover that contain it. |
Outro |
| Gina:Well, that’s it for this lesson. |
| Nora:As always, feel free to listen to this lesson again, and do please read the lesson notes. |
| Gina:And you can always leave us a comment to tell us about your encounters with som! |
| Nora:See you next time! Ha det |
| Gina:Thanks for listening, bye! |
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