Dialogue

Vocabulary

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How many times have you been on a trip with your camera, trying to immortalize an epic moment? In Norway there are so many amazing fjords, mountains, and people to tempt your camera that you won’t put it away! I know you don’t want to jeopardize your marvelous photo album of Norway. That’s why we’ll be devoting this lesson to more photo phrases.
In the last lesson we learned how to ask someone to take your picture:
Kan du ta bilete av meg?
But what do you do if you want to take someone else’s picture? Sometimes, with people that you don’t know, this request can be bothersome. That's why you must be as nice as you can! “Excuse me, can I take your picture, please?” in Nynorsk is
Unnskyld, kan eg få ta bilete av deg?
Let’s break it down:
(slow) Unn-skyld, kan eg få ta bi-le-te av deg?
Once more:
Unnskyld, kan eg få ta bilete av deg?
You definitely know the meaning of unnskyld, so let’s explain the rest of our phrase.
Kan eg? is “can I?” This is followed by “få” which means “to get” or “be allowed to.” Let's take these three words together.
(slow) Kan eg få?
Kan eg få?
This section means “May I” and is a really useful and really polite way of asking permission to do things.
Next comes ta bilete, which means “to take a picture” or “to take pictures.”
(slow) Ta bi-le-te.
Ta bilete.
After that comes av deg, which means “of you,” when it's just one person.
(slow) Av deg.
Av deg.
The whole request is
(slow) Unn-skyld, kan eg få ta bi-le-te av deg?
Unnskyld, kan eg få ta bilete av deg?
If you want to take a picture of more than one person, then you should replace the word deg with dokker, which is “you,” when talking about more than one person.
(slow) Dok-ker.
Dokker.
The whole sentence is
Unnskyld, kan eg få ta bilete av dokker?
(slow) Unn-skyld, kan eg få ta bi-le-te av dok-ker?
Unnskyld, kan eg få ta bilete av dokker?
If you want to offer to take a picture of someone – maybe a friend or a group struggling to do it themselves - then you can ask:
Skal eg ta bilete av deg?
(slow) Skal eg ta bi-le-te av deg?
Skal eg ta bilete av deg?
What we've done here is replace kan eg få with skal eg (“Shall I?”) to make “Shall I take your picture?” Let's practice skal eg?, which is also useful by itself:
(slow) Skal eg?
Skal eg?
Once again the whole question is
Skal eg ta bilete av deg?
If you go to one of Norway's museums, art galleries, or stave churches, you should ask if it's okay to take pictures before snapping away. “Can I take pictures here?” in Nynorsk is
Er det lov å ta bilete her?
Let’s break it down:
(slow) Er det lov å ta bi-le-te her?
And once again:
Er det lov å ta bilete her?
The structure of this sentence is bit different from the others, so we'll look at this one in plenty of detail!
The first part of the phrase, er det lov å...?, literally means “Is it allowed,” but this useful pattern can be better translated as “Is (blank) allowed?” You can use this anytime you want to check if it's okay to do something. Let's hear it slowly and then at normal speed.
(slow) Er det lov å...?
Er det lov å...?
After er det lov å...? you have to put a verb. In our case, we've got the verb ta, meaning “take.” We've followed this with bilete, so together it means “to take pictures,” as we’ve learned before.
Finally, we have her, which means “here”:
(slow) Her.
Her.
So the whole question is
(slow) Er det lov å ta bi-le-te her?
Er det lov å ta bilete her?

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