Team Nordic [study and support group]

[Philipp]

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.

[SGP]

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.

[Brun Ugle]

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.

[Philipp]

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.

[Elsa Maria]

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.

[Celtmists]

Hi I'm David in the UK and just joined. I'm trying to find anyone Swedish or learning Swedish as I used to live in Sweden for about 4 years in the Nineties and generally have chats about the language etc. as I'm a bit out of practice these days.

Hope someone can help....

Thanks

[SGP]

Hi I'm David in the UK and just joined. I'm trying to find anyone Swedish or learning Swedish as I used to live in Sweden for about 4 years in the Nineties and generally have chats about the language etc. as I'm a bit out of practice these days.

Hope someone can help....

Thanks

Hi David, I am also among those who should practice some more. As soon as you are able to send PMs, you definitely can PM me . Chances are that sending and receiving wouldn't work right now, because it only is enabled after, I think, 5 posts. But looking forward to hearing from you. And more more thing: yes, my list of languages states that while the maximum Swedish reading ability of mine is B2, the minimum speaking ability is pre-A1. But that is about oral speech, not about writing (which is much closer to B2 than to pre-A1). So there's no need to worry .

[Celtmists]

Hej SGP

Jag tror att en av de bästa väg att borja är att titta och lyssna samtidigt på Engelska filmer med den oversättning på Svensk nedan som du kan finna med YouTube. Den samma väg jag har gjört....

Hoppas det hjälpa dej....

[Eriol]

Hi!

Most likely nobody will remember me, but I was somewhat active on the HTLAL-forums a long time ago. Then life kind of got in the way of my independent language learning and I haven't done anything actively with any of "my" languages in the past five years or so. But now I'm more or less forced back in here since I have taken up studying Finnish more seriously. The background is the following:

I'm a native Swedish-speaker residing in Sweden with my Finnish wife and 10-month-old daughter that we are planning to raise bilingually. The last few years have been way to busy in terms of work and other stuff to really get me started in Finnish, but now I'm on parental leave with a little bit more time to work on the language. I have some of the basics already so I'm not really a total beginner.

Current study methods:

- I'm attending an evening course for beginners. This amounts to 2 hours per week with some homework which so far hasn't been very demanding.
- I have started the FSI Conversational Finnish-course. Right now moving into unit 3, but I find it quite difficult and I think I will need to go back to previous units for revision several times. Biggest problem is finding the time and concentration to do this.
- I try to add all unknown words into Anki. Current wordcount: 249.

I don't think I will start a log on this forum, but I will check in now and then and try to help with questions about Swedish (and the little Finnish I know which is mostly cultural stuff).

Edit: Decided to start a log after all, here it is: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10256