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!