A language learners’ forum

suomiruotsinorja wrote:Moi/hej/hei everyone!

This study group seems to be just the place for me! I am Finnish, studying in Sweden and dating a Norwegian guy. My biggest problem at the moment is mixing up Swedish and Norwegian. I am fluent in Swedish and I can understand Norwegian well. However, when I try to learn to produce Norwegian it ends up affecting my Swedish (I sometimes use Norwegian words by accident and confuse my Swedish friends). Any advice? The languages are so similar - which is a blessing and a curse.

Unless you really want to learn Norwegian, you might as well just stick with Swedish since Norwegians usually understand it without many problems. If you do want to learn Norwegian, then I’ve heard some people say that it helps to concentrate on the different “feeling” of the languages. That is, every language has its own personality or feel and if you can “feel Norwegian” when you speak Norwegian and “feel Swedish” when you speak Swedish, you won’t mix them up. It sounds like New Age mumbo jumbo, I know, but it is said to help.

The 10-part Danish television series “Historien om Danmark” is back on dr.dk, now with Danish subtitles as well as synstolkning. It can be viewed outside of Denmark, and it’ll be available until August 12, 2019. Here’s the link to the first episode:

https://www.dr.dk/tv/se/historien-om-da ... -stenalder

AlOlaf wrote:The 10-part Danish television series “Historien om Danmark” is back on dr.dk, now with Danish subtitles as well as synstolkning. It can be viewed outside of Denmark, and it’ll be available until August 12, 2019. Here’s the link to the first episode:

https://www.dr.dk/tv/se/historien-om-da ... -stenalder

Thanks, that is a good show and I missed a few episodes the first time around.

I just started to read Sønnen by Nesbø and I stumbled upon a construction I don’t really understand. I have seen this particular construction a couple of times now and it always puzzles me.

The context is, two old colleagues banter and the topic of having children comes up:

«Jeg tror du alt har en unge et sted, jeg, det er derfor du ikke vil ha.»

I understand the meaning, `I think you already have a kid somewhere, that’s why you don’t want another.´ What I don‘t understand is the meaning of the second jeg. What‘s the difference in meaning without it?

Philipp wrote:I just started to read Sønnen by Nesbø and I stumbled upon a construction I don’t really understand. I have seen this particular construction a couple of times now and it always puzzles me.

The context is, two old colleagues banter and the topic of having children comes up:

«Jeg tror du alt har en unge et sted, jeg, det er derfor du ikke vil ha.»

I understand the meaning, `I think you already have a kid somewhere, that’s why you don’t want another.´ What I don‘t understand is the meaning of the second jeg. What‘s the difference in meaning without it?

The following isn't a complete answer, but maybe it still is of some use:

- When a word is repeated in just any language, it is often done for simply emphasizing it.

- Apart from that... could it be that this colleague calls himself/herself the unge of the other colleague? Not sure about the book's context, but it could be a metaphor or a joke.

- And no, I didn't forget that for sentence objects, there are other words like mig/meg. But even as someone with a nowhere-near-C2 understanding I still "dare" to say that I consider that meaning to be possible. Words like "I" and "me" sometimes are used interchangeably in other languages like English, so maybe here, too. Also, there are these commas. What's more, it also is an element of style of some writers to sometimes come up with a Direct Speech Citation that intentionally "deviates" a bit from the Standard Written Language.

SGP wrote:

Philipp wrote:I just started to read Sønnen by Nesbø and I stumbled upon a construction I don’t really understand. I have seen this particular construction a couple of times now and it always puzzles me.

The context is, two old colleagues banter and the topic of having children comes up:

«Jeg tror du alt har en unge et sted, jeg, det er derfor du ikke vil ha.»

I understand the meaning, `I think you already have a kid somewhere, that’s why you don’t want another.´ What I don‘t understand is the meaning of the second jeg. What‘s the difference in meaning without it?

The following isn't a complete answer, but maybe it still is of some use:

- When a word is repeated in just any language, it is often done for simply emphasizing it.

- Apart from that... could it be that this colleague calls himself/herself the unge of the other colleague? Not sure about the book's context, but it could be a metaphor or a joke.

- And no, I didn't forget that for sentence objects, there are other words like mig/meg. But even as someone with a nowhere-near-C2 understanding I still "dare" to say that I consider that meaning to be possible. Words like "I" and "me" sometimes are used interchangeably in other languages like English, so maybe here, too. Also, there are these commas. What's more, it also is an element of style of some writers to sometimes come up with a Direct Speech Citation that intentionally "deviates" a bit from the Standard Written Language.

From the context, it's clear she, the colleague, is referring to having children. She asks him something like "still no children, yet". He answers with "still not retired yet" and then the quoted sentence follows.

You are right this is certainly a colloquialism. Nesbø often writes direct speech in dialect, which is at times more than a bit different from standard language. Most of this goes over my head, but I can usually tell that it's not bokmål.

I've seen this particular construction in other books from him, but I have also seen it on reddit or some other forum. Probably it's used to emphasize the "I". Maybe it’s something like “I glaube ja Lehrer sind auch nur Menschen, glaube ich”. Though, I’m not sure if that is a natural German sentence. I still find it peculiar, I, to frame a sentence with jeg.

Philipp wrote:You are right this is certainly a colloquialism. Nesbø often writes direct speech in dialect, which is at times more than a bit different from standard language. Most of this goes over my head, but I can usually tell that it's not bokmål.

Norway is full of dialects. I really like their attitude towards them. And they even have got two variants of Standard (!) Norwegian, the other one being Nynorsk. #History #Danmark
Whenever I had the time to continue with my workable (= improvable) Norwegian, I usually checked first what variant any particular learning resource would use. Wouldn't want to make the differences a very big deal either. However, they do exist. And (many/all) Norwegians learn both of them, but I wouldn't expect "The Average Norwegian" to know both of them to the very, very same degree.

Philipp wrote:I just started to read Sønnen by Nesbø and I stumbled upon a construction I don’t really understand. I have seen this particular construction a couple of times now and it always puzzles me.

The context is, two old colleagues banter and the topic of having children comes up:

«Jeg tror du alt har en unge et sted, jeg, det er derfor du ikke vil ha.»

I understand the meaning, `I think you already have a kid somewhere, that’s why you don’t want another.´ What I don‘t understand is the meaning of the second jeg. What‘s the difference in meaning without it?

Maybe a real Norwegian will come along and give you a better answer as to why we say it that way, but in the meantime, I can tell you that that is a very common, colloquial way of expressing oneself. We often start a sentence with “jeg” (I) and end it the same way. The sentence means the same thing if you leave out the second “jeg”, but it’s very common in casual speech to include it. I suppose, as SGP suggests, it can give a bit of extra emphasis as in emphasizing that it is the speaker’s own opinion/belief, but it’s so common that it barely even feels all that emphatic.

The idea that he’s referring to himself as the other man’s child? No, definitely not.

Edit: Oops, I see from your second post that the speaker was female, but my answer still applies, just change the pronouns.

Brun Ugle wrote:Maybe a real Norwegian will come along and give you a better answer as to why we say it that way, but in the meantime, I can tell you that that is a very common, colloquial way of expressing oneself. We often start a sentence with “jeg” (I) and end it the same way. The sentence means the same thing if you leave out the second “jeg”, but it’s very common in casual speech to include it. I suppose, as SGP suggests, it can give a bit of extra emphasis as in emphasizing that it is the speaker’s own opinion/belief, but it’s so common that it barely even feels all that emphatic.

Thank you, for the explanation. I must have heard this expression before, but I'm still at that stage where I can barely comprehend. My brain seems to filter out any finer points or redundant information when I listen, but in writing this construction jumped out at me.

For the Danish learners:

Here is a series of 22 short, educational films about the Danish political system. There are Danish subtitles that can be turned off. The average film length is about three minutes.