Om

Some words in Norwegian have multiple meanings, and sometimes it's almost impossible to distinguish for someone who isn't fluent.

One particular example is the word "om"

Depending on where you first learn the word, you probably recognize it as meaning "about" for example in the sentence "What do you think about...?"

"Hva tenker du om...?" (literally meaning "what think you about...?")

But then maybe you come across the phrase "om du aldri prøver, du aldri vinne" (if you never try, you never win)

So now, not only does "om" mean "about", it also means "if". This would not be so bad if om didn't also mean "on":

"Det er om bordet" (it is on the table)

Fortunately, this is a pretty unusual thing to say, as a preposition (words which define the location of something eg. in, on, under, around) it would be more common to use the word "på" for this scenario in the sentence "Det er på bordet".

To further confuse the situation there is also another word for "if" - "hvis". At the beginning of a sentence, these terms - hvis and om - are virtually interchangeable. You could say "Hvis du vil" or "Om du vil" to begin a sentence with "If you want". however, it is important to note that "hvis" is rarely used in the middle or end of a sentence (not that any proper sentences end on the word "if" in either language). For example, you cannot say "Jeg ble spurt hvis jeg hadde en katt" (I was asked if I had a cat). The correct way would be to say "Jeg ble spurt om jeg hadde en katt"

Om is just one of numerous words that are either the same and have different meanings, or are spelled or pronounced similar but have different meanings. The word in Norwegian for "meaning" is "betydning" and as you learn more and more Norwegian you will quickly discover that there are many homonyms (words with different meanings) in the language. Unfortunately, the only way to learn this is to learn the meanings and practice using them in different sentences, so, good luck.

Sentence Forming Words

Generally, when you want to say you've been learning Norwegian, or you've started, you don't want to spout out a bunch of random Norwegian words, you'll probably want to form sentences. This is also, obviously, important groundwork for the rest of the language.

So, following will be some words that pretty much every sentence will have at least one of. Some of them, you may recognize from previous posts, but it's always good to see words again.

I - Jeg (Ja-ee)
Him - Han (Hahn)
Her - Hun (Hoohn)
Are - Er (Are)
Is - Er (Are)
Am - Er (Are)
Was - Var (Vahr)
Has/Have - Har (Hahr)
Had - Hadde (Hahd-deh)
A/One - En (Exactly the same way you pronounce the letter N)
You - Du (Doo)
You - Deg or Dere (Die/Deeh or Derah)*
At - På (Poh)
On - På (Poh)
Who - Hvem or Som (Vem or Sohm)*
What - Hva (Vah)
When - Når (Nor)
Where - Hvor (Hvor)
Why - Hvorfor (Vorfor)
How - Hvordan (Vordan)
The - en (Same as En above)*

These words are generally used in sentences, I'll give some examples soon, but first I need to clear up some things. På has many different meaning, these depend on context. It is also not the only word for "in".

As for the stars at the words for "the" and "you" this is because you use du in certain situations, deg when referring directly to the person, and dere when referring to multiple people (I suppose the English equivalent would be 'all of you'?. The other thing is the word en. At the beginning of a word, it is singular, for example 'en hund' means "a dog" however, at the end of a word it becomes definite, in other words, it means the. Thus you get 'hunden' which means "the dog". There are other rules to this of course, especially for feminine, masculine and neuter words, but I will cover those later on, this is the basic idea. For the word who, it also changes from som to vem depending on use (sometimes even dialect). For now we will just use "vem".

Lets see some examples:

Hvor kommer du fra? - Where comes you from? (Where do you come from)
Har dere hunder? - Have you dogs? (Speaking to two people, or a group)
Hvor ar hunden? - Where is the dog?
Når er du her?  - When are you here? (Maybe asking someone when they will be in your town)

Brace yourself, this is a longer sentence;

Hyggelig å hilser på deg! - Nice to greet (on) you! (Basically, good to see you)

I hope these few example sentences have sort of explained a few uses of the words for 'you' among other words. I know there are some words in these sentences that aren't covered in my posts yet that I haven't put any pronunciation for, but they will probably get covered in the future.


To finish, some inspiration to learn more:

Voe, a fairly popular blogger from Norway

Until next time, ha det!

Some Basics

I’m not really sure what is considered basics of languages so I think the best thing to start with is probably all the common phrases, introductions and things like that. I’ll try make this come up as a little table sort of thing, with the word in Norsk, the word in English, and then the pronunciation. For most of these the pronunciation is pretty obvious, but i’ll put it there anyway just to get into the habit of it, when we move on to more complicated norwegian words. Some explanations of the pronunciation might be a bit strange, mainly because I can’t think of a better way to explain it. It works in my head. 

• (Norsk – English – Pronunciation) 
  
• Ja – Yes – (Yah)
• Nei – No – (Like the beginning of “night” just don’t say the ‘t’)
• Kanskje - Maybe – (Kan-sheh, almost like saying ‘can she’*)
• Hallo – Hello – (Hallu)
• Ha det/Har det bra – Bye/Good bye (Ha deh/Har deh bra, this literally means ‘have it good’)
• Hvordan har du det? – How are you? - (Vordan har doo deh, How have you it?)
• Hvor bor du? – Where do you live? – (Vor bor du, Where live you?)
• Hva heter du? – What is your name? – (Va heter du, what names you?)
• Hvor gammel er du? – How old are you? – (Vor gamehl ar doo?)

*I’ll do a post in a few days if I get time, about the ‘sk’ and ‘skj’ sounds. 

A few side notes – for words like hvor and hva, I’ve written the pronunciation as basically ignoring the ‘h’ sound, that’s because it’s so soft it’s practically not there in my opinion, but the 'v' is softer. It’s hard to explain, you will have to hear it most likely. Another note is the ‘r’ in Norwegian words, like har det bra. The ‘r’ is rolled especially in the middle of words, and in some cases it’s pronunciation is very important, and can make the difference between saying two different words. 

To avoid confusion, Ha and Har both mean ‘have’ in this case, the r is just usually dropped for the shorter ‘ha det’.  To add confusion, ‘Har’ and ‘Her’ both have almost the same pronunciation in Norwegian, but one means have and the other means here (remember ‘e’ in Norwegian is normally pronounced like an English ‘a’).

Since some of the phrases I used are questions, I’m now going to go through and answer them with a simple answer...

Hvordan har du det? – Jeg ha det bra (I have it good)*****

Hvor bor du? – Jeg bor i Norge (I live in Norway, do not confuse ‘bor’ with ‘born’ as I usually do)

Hva heter du? – Jeg heter Olaf Haraldsson (My name is...)

Hvor gammel er du? – Jeg er 18 år (I am 18 years)

That pretty much raps it up for today. In a few days hopefully i’ll have time to do one for pronunciation of ‘skj’ etc, and in a week i’ll do one for Christmas in Norway.

In other news, Norwegian women are apparently some of the most beautiful in the world.

If you're wondering about the outfit, I'll explain it later

Just another reason to live there!















*****An anonymous poster below mentioned that you can't say "Jeg ha det bra" I said above in this post how important the 'r' pronunciation can be, if you read the two comments you'll probably understand what I'm saying a bit more, in a way, jeg har det bra is saying "i'm fine" (still literally I have it good) and I suppose Jeg ha det bra would be like saying "I'm having a good time." But I don't think anyone actually says that. If you read the anonymous comment he/she also showed an example of the difference in past/present/definite/infinite kind of, which is actually a good idea which I'm now going to steal for later use.