# Norwegian: Life is beautiful



## Sam0309

Hello!

can anyone tell me what the sentence 'Life is beautiful' is in Norwegian?

I am planning to get a tattoo with that sentence so you have to be 100% sure please! haha


----------



## The_Red_Lion

90% confident that it is:

*Liv er vakkert*.

When stating generalities, the adjective usually appears in the neuter singular, regardless of the noun's number and gender.

*Liv* is also a female name though. So I'm not sure if you would end up with an ambiguous tattoo. Although the adjective might just be *vakker* in that case.


----------



## Lemminkäinen

*Livet er vakkert* is correct, with 'life' in the definite form. 



The_Red_Lion said:


> When stating generalities, the adjective usually appears in the neuter singular, regardless of the noun's number and gender.



That sounds a bit vague to me, and it's incorrect in some cases too. The predicative is congruent with the part of the sentence it describes. Since *liv* is a neuter noun, the predicate adjective is neuter as well. 



> *Liv* is also a female name though. So I'm not sure if you would end up with an ambiguous tattoo. Although the adjective might just be *vakker* in that case.



*Liv er vakker* would indeed mean that the (female) person Liv is beautiful.


----------



## The_Red_Lion

> When stating generalities, the adjective usually appears in the neuter singular, regardless of the noun's number and gender.


 


Lemminkäinen said:


> That sounds a bit vague to me, and it's incorrect in some cases too. The predicative is congruent with the part of the sentence it describes. Since *liv* is a neuter noun, the predicate adjective is neuter as well.


 
Oh... That's what my text book written by Norwegian professors said. 

Some other examples it gave were:

Mat er godt. (Food is nice.) Isn't mat masculine but godt is neuter?

Roser er pent. (Roses are pretty.)

I'm confused now.


----------



## Lemminkäinen

The_Red_Lion said:


> Mat er godt. (Food is nice.) Isn't mat masculine but godt is neuter?



Correct, but here's what my textbook in linguistics says:



> Sometimes we get what appears to be the wrong form of the word, but is a completely acceptable sentence. This might happen when the semantical reading takes presedence over the morphological features. Morphologically _sjokolade_ is a masculine noun, but in [the sentence] below, _sjokolade_ is interpreted as "the substance ["stoffet"] chocolate", and we can rewrite it to _Det er godt_.


(my translation)

The sentence is:

[SUBJECT-masculine _Sjokolade_] _er_ [PREDICATIVE-neuter *godt*]

(When it's referred to a specific chocolate however, the predicative is congruent: _Denne sjokoladen er god_.)

So the same thing would be valid for *mat*, which also explains why you would say _maten er god_.



> Roser er pent. (Roses are pretty.)



Without context, I'm sceptical to that sentence and would prefer _roser er pene_ as the most neutral one. I don't think your sentence is ungrammatical, though; it suggests a reading like _det er pent med roser_.

Edit: Re-reading your attempt (_liv er vakkert_), it struck me that it is actually correct, but it depends on what context *Sam0309* means when he says "life is beautiful". If he - as I interpreted it - meant to make a remark about his life (i.e. that things are going great and life's a beauty) then he needs to use the definite form (_livet_), but if he wanted to remark on the beauty of life in general (i.e. life, in all its incarnations around the globe - an infant, a ladybug and a lion, for instance - is a beautiful thing), then your sentence is correct.


----------



## The_Red_Lion

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll give you their names so you can follow it up. 

I think I understand what you mean. But the original explanation (from the textbook) said when using generalities. So you wouldn't be saying this chocolate or the food. You would be saying it in an unspecific manner.

With Roser er pent. That was it in the book, there was no further context given.

The other examples it gave were:

Sigaretter er skadelig. (Cigarettes are harmful.)

Frukt og grønnsaker er dyrt. (Fruit and vegetables are expensive.)

It then also went on to say that in the case of living beings the main rules of concord normally apply:

Elefanter er store. (Elephants are big.)

EDIT: I should add for clarity that Liv er vakkert wasn't in the text book. That was me trying to apply the rules from the book to something else.


----------



## AndersH

Skulle översättningen av "Life is beautiful" bli "Liv er vakkert" på norska? I OBESTÄMD FORM? Och adjektivet VACKER? I så fall är norska märkligare än jag trodde. Till och med isländska skulle använda bestämd form i sådana satser. 

På svenska finns det ett uttryck som används när solen skiner och livet leker: 

   "Livet är underbart"

Säger man inte så på norska?

Vad sägs om följande tatuering på svenska?

  === KÖR HÅRT, LIVET ÄR KORT ===

But no fun when you're sixtyfour though


----------



## Lemminkäinen

The_Red_Lion said:


> I think I understand what you mean. But the original explanation (from the textbook) said when using generalities. So you wouldn't be saying this chocolate or the food. You would be saying it in an unspecific manner.



Ah, so by "generalities" you mean the indefinite form?



> Sigaretter er skadelig. (Cigarettes are harmful.)



Here, I would prefer *skadelige*. 



> Frukt og grønnsaker er dyrt. (Fruit and vegetables are expensive.)


 
I would explain this by saying that these are uncountable nouns, which belong to the same sphere as the "substances" discussed above.

Reviewing this discussion, it seems that we're actually talking about the same thing; it was just the way you (your textbook) phrased it that threw me off in the beginning. When you talk about chocolate as a substance, you do indeed talk about it as a generality, wouldn't you say? 

And that's why your translation, *liv er vakkert*, has the meaning I described above - life, in whatever shape or form it has, is beautiful. 



AndersH said:


> Skulle översättningen av "Life is beautiful" bli "Liv er vakkert" på norska? I OBESTÄMD FORM? Och adjektivet VACKER? I så fall är norska märkligare än jag trodde. Till och med isländska skulle använda bestämd form i sådana satser.
> 
> På svenska finns det ett uttryck som används när solen skiner och livet leker:
> 
> "Livet är underbart"
> 
> Säger man inte så på norska?



I ubestemt form har det en annen betydning, så det kommer som sagt an på hva man vil ha fram med "life is beautiful". Men det er en mulig oversettelse, avhengig av konteksten. 

Regarding the adjective, perhaps *livet er herlig* would fit better (if it's intented the way I read it - that life is great, everything's going fantastic, &c).

Indeed, "livet er herlig" yields forty times more Google hits than "livet er vakkert". Both has been used as movie titles, though. The former for the Italian _La Vita è bella_, and the latter for the French _Merci la vie_.


----------



## The_Red_Lion

Yep I'm happy. Thanks for your input. Examples like this help me to remember things.

Liv er vakkert. - All life is beautiful

Livet er vakkert or maybe even better livet er herlig. - The life of the individual with the tattoo is beautiful. (Things are going great etc.)

Liv er vakker. - Liv (the person) is beautiful.

Personally, I wouldn't fancy explaining the tattoo to a non-native speaker though.


----------



## oskhen

The_Red_Lion said:


> Yep I'm happy. Thanks for your input. Examples like this help me to remember things.
> 
> Liv er vakkert. - All life is beautiful
> 
> Livet er vakkert or maybe even better livet er herlig. - The life of the individual with the tattoo is beautiful. (Things are going great etc.)
> 
> Liv er vakker. - Liv (the person) is beautiful.
> 
> Personally, I wouldn't fancy explaining the tattoo to a non-native speaker though.


 
Technically, "liv er vakkert" might be a correct sentence, but I - and I'm quite sure most native Norwegians with me - would find it rather odd. Just a warning.


----------



## The_Red_Lion

> Technically, "liv er vakkert" might be a correct sentence, but I - and I'm quite sure most native Norwegians with me - would find it rather odd. Just a warning.


 
Thanks for that. I've little experience of spoken Norwegian.  It just came from the examples in the textbook, and then me applying the rules to another situation.

It is a little unnerving though that some of the examples of 'generalities' in the textbook were considered disputable. Maybe I should ask for my money back.


----------



## Wilma_Sweden

The_Red_Lion said:


> It is a little unnerving though that some of the examples of 'generalities' in the textbook were considered disputable. Maybe I should ask for my money back.


I think the vague definitions in your grammar book are probably the most disputable. The corresponding phenomenon exists in Swedish:

*An adjective that functions as a subject complement* (=predicate adjective/ predikatsfyllnad) in a clause, can be inflected in the neuter regardless of what gender the subject has, provided that *the subject has generic reference*. Generic reference is marked by the *indefinite form*. Examples:
Pannkakor är gott. Nedladdning av filmer är populärt. Cigaretter är skadligt. 

If you can re-write it as Det är gott/populärt/skadligt [med]..., then it works, which your grammar book also seemed to suggest. In Swedish, it belongs to informal written or spoken style.

/Wilma


----------

