# Norwegian: Corrected the mistake



## Grefsen

Last week I noticed a fact error made in an online article posted at *websider av norsk avisen VG. * When I checked the article today I noticed that the mistake has since been corrected.  

*Jeg vil gjerne skrive på norsk* "VG has corrected the mistake."

*Her er mitt **forsøk: 

VG har rettet feilen.*


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## vestfoldlilja

That's correct


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## Grefsen

*Tusen takk for positiv tilbakemelding vestfoldlilja.* 

How would I write instead "VG has finally corrected their mistake?"


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## Huffameg

Grefsen said:


> Last week I noticed a fact error made in an online article posted at *websider av norsk avisen VG (websidene til den norske avisen VG). * When I checked the article today I noticed that the mistake has since been corrected.



Prepositions are hell.

I'm noticing that you're trying to add words together. That sound often very good in norwegian (tabloidavisen, kulturavisen, drittavisen, drømmeavisen etc.), it does not, however, work with any word referring to a country (except understodd as language: norskkurs) and you should keep in mind that dividing such words (kultur avisen) is severly frowned upon. 



Grefsen said:


> How would I write instead "VG has finally corrected their mistake?"



You could use the words "omsider" or "endelig".
There is a difference in nuance but I don't know if I'm able to explain. I would go for "omsider" in this context.


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## vestfoldlilja

My dictionary says; omsider: at length, at last, finally, eventually, and endelig; at last, at length, finally, ultimately. 

At first glance I too would use omsider, but it depends on how long you’ve been waiting for the correction to take place. If you use endelig, it sounds like you have waited a long time for the correction to be made. While, the feeling I have at least, is that with omsider, it’s more like they (who made the correction) just had to get around to it, that in between at the other little and big things they had to change/do they just now chose to do it, like they could have done it earlier but lazed around before getting to it. 

Omsider har VG rettet feilen (sin). It sounds off to have the sin, in the sentence, so I would drop it, but you can add more information about the mistake or article. Omsider har VG rettet feilen, doesn’t say anything about which mistake, or which article it was found in. The person you’re writing to most likely know what you mean, but it would make the sentence clearer if it had information about the mistake or article; Omsider har VG rettet feilen (i artikkelen om …)  - VG has at last corrected the mistake in the article about …, or omsider har VG rettet kildefeilen – finally VG has corrected the source error they made (obviously I made the mistake up since I don’t know the real one). 

In English these sentences might sound strange, but in Norwegian it is more common with more information about what, where and who in a sentence. 

I’ve added two more examples to further explain what I mean.  

Omsider så fikk han samla seg til å dra – at last he managed to get himself ready to go. 

Endelig så fikk han samla seg til å dra – finally he managed to get himself ready to go.

I’m not sure if the difference between them translates well in English, but that is how I would use the words.


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## Grefsen

*Tusen takk for hjelpen Huffameg.  *



Huffameg said:


> Prepositions are hell.



*Hvordan sier man på norsk* "I wholeheartedly agree with this statement."  



Huffameg said:


> I'm noticing that you're trying to add words together. That often sound*s* very good in *N*orwegian (tabloidavisen, kulturavisen, drittavisen, drømmeavisen etc.), it does not, however, work with any word referring to a country (except those words understo*o*d as relating directly to language: norskkurs). and You should also keep in mind that dividing such words (kultur avisen) is sever*e*ly frowned upon.   (I have made a few suggestions in red and corrected a couple of minor typos in *bold red*.)



Would "newspaper articles" (articles from several different newspapers) *på norsk *need to be fused together into the compound noun "*aviserartikkeler?"*
 


Huffameg said:


> You could use the words "omsider" or "endelig".
> There is a difference in nuance but I don't know if I'm able to explain. I would go for "omsider" in this context.


*Tusen takk for det! *


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## Huffameg

Thanks for the corrections! 
I see that it is desperately needed. 



Grefsen said:


> *Hvordan sier man på norsk* "I wholeheartedly agree with this statement."



We have this expression "Det er jeg (så) hjertens enig i!/Jeg er hjertens enig i den påstanden". 




Grefsen said:


> Should "newspaper articles" (articles from several newspapers) *på norsk *be fused together into the compund noun "*aviserartikkeler?"*



Yes, that is correct! It is, however, written avisartikler. 
The fact the articles in question are from newspapers, as opposed to other articles, this becomes a trait of "artikler" and you should use the singular, undetermined form. This would be the same for any compound word (politihund, sølvgaffel, flaskeåpner). An interesting caracterisic is that in Norwegian, you could just as easily change the order of the words, making completely different meanings. Ex: 
avisartikkel: newspaper article
artikkelavis: a newspaper specializing in articles (whatever that means)
sølvgaffel: a silver fork
gaffelsølv: a (special) silver used in forks (whatever that might be )

You should also notice that the word artikkel has only one K in plural. In addition you take away the left over E:
artikkel - artikkelen - artikler - artiklene
This goes for any similar words (e.g. sykkel):
sykkel - sykkelen - sykler - syklene. 

Looking forward to more corrections.


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## hanne

Huffameg said:
			
		

> An interesting caracterisic is that in Norwegian, you could just as easily change the order of the words, making completely different meanings.


What's particularly Norwegian about that? It seems to apply to every language I can think of...


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## Huffameg

hanne said:


> What's particularly Norwegian about that? It seems to apply to every language I can think of...



I didn't say it didn't exist in other languages but you can not always coin words like that in English without it sounding strange and as we are speaking English here, I found it well worth mentioning. For instance: 
You can "newspaper article" but it would seem strange to say "article newspaper". It seems, on the other hand, that to say "police dog" is just as well as "dog police". 
To explain this phenomenon I often use the words "pølserosin" and "rosinpølse". These two have meaning in Norwegian (and perhaps in other languages as well) and they don't seem awkward. Inversely, although "hot dog raisin" is good, "raisin hot dog" does not say what I want it do say. 

What do you native English speakers think? 
My third language is French where it definitely would be strange to fuse words like that.


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## Wilma_Sweden

I'm not a native English speaker, but I'll comment anyway: English compound words are created almost as freely as the Scandianavian ones. A very general rule of thumb is that the second word in the compound is the headword, and the first one adds some specification to it. Usually, the compound is written as two words, not one. In a compound, the first word is stressed in speech. This is why we say *Oxford* Street, not Oxford *Street*. 

So, you could in fact put raisins and sausage together and get *raisin* sausage (presumably a sausage with raisins in it), or sausage and raisins: *sausage* raisins (presumably a specific type of raisin used for stuffing into this kind of sausage). Some compounds may seem odd, but that's true for the Scandinavian languages as well. 

The main difference is that Scandinavians fuse the compounds into one word, which the English don't usually do, and unfortunately, this English 'separate writing' of compounds is spreading, at least to Swedish, and it's nothing less than an abomination! 

/Wilma


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## hanne

I was mostly thinking of English as well.
However "raisin hot dog" seems perfectly fine to me (a hot dog with raisins), which is why I didn't get what you meant, and tried extending the idea to a few other languages as well, looking for a difference.

I'd expect that any language would be able to express the concepts "a sausage containing raisins" and "a raisin used for sausage stuffing" - how would they do that, without being able to make both compounds? (nom I'm just trying to apply logic, not knowledge...)

Wilma, you say "almost as freely", I'd have thought "just as freely" - do you have any examples or is that just a hunch?


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## Wilma_Sweden

hanne said:


> Wilma, you say "almost as freely", I'd have thought "just as freely" - do you have any examples or is that just a hunch?


The problem in English arises when you have three-word compounds, such as your raisin hot dog, or the example from Wikipedia, a heavy weight lifter. You may get an ambiguous compound - is it a weight-lifter who is heavy (tung vektløfter), or is it a lifter of heavy weights (tungvektsløfter)? The fact that you have to stop and think about what a three-word compound really means also indicates that the compounding process is not as free as in Scandinavian languages. Also, Scandinavians (and probably Germans, too) can easily construct three- four- or even five-word compounds, such as stationsmästartjänstgöringsschema (station master's duty roster). 

Your raisin hot dog is another shining example: a raisin hot dog would be a hot dog (bread + sausage) served with raisins, while a raisin sausage would be a sausage containing raisins, i.e. stuffed with a meat/raisin mix.

Hoever, I was starting to wonder what a rosinpølse really is when I saw this picture of a sausage left on the grill so long that the sausage was shrivelled and dry like a raisin...

/Wilma


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## The_Red_Lion

Wilma_Sweden said:


> The main difference is that Scandinavians fuse the compounds into one word, which the English don't usually do,


 
I think you're right there. Although it can of course happen with words like _teacup_ and _bookshelf_ for example. And heavyweight too.



			
				Huffameg said:
			
		

> You can "newspaper article" but it would seem strange to say "article newspaper". It seems, on the other hand, that to say "police dog" is just as well as "dog police".


 
To be honest both "article newspaper" and "dog police" sound strange to me. It would seem more natural to say something like "dog support unit" or "dog handling section" of a particular police force.


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## Wilma_Sweden

The_Red_Lion said:


> To be honest both "article newspaper" and "dog police" sound strange to me. It would seem more natural to say something like "dog support unit" or "dog handling section" of a particular police force.


Is canine used in the UK, or just America, as in canine police unit or K9 cops?

/Wilma


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## hanne

Wilma_Sweden said:


> The problem in English arises when you have three-word compounds, such as your raisin hot dog, or the example from Wikipedia, a heavy weight lifter. You may get an ambiguous compound - is it a weight-lifter who is heavy (tung vektløfter), or is it a lifter of heavy weights (tungvektsløfter)? The fact that you have to stop and think about what a three-word compound really means also indicates that the compounding process is not as free as in Scandinavian languages. Also, Scandinavians (and probably Germans, too) can easily construct three- four- or even five-word compounds, such as stationsmästartjänstgöringsschema (station master's duty roster).
> 
> Your raisin hot dog is another shining example: a raisin hot dog would be a hot dog (bread + sausage) served with raisins, while a raisin sausage would be a sausage containing raisins, i.e. stuffed with a meat/raisin mix.


Hm, you're right that at least we don't have a problem with nearby adjectives getting caught up in the noun.

But we still have a similar potential problem with multi-part compounds.
"sommerferieassistanceskema" could be a ferieassistanceskema for the summer period, or an assistanceskema for the summer holidays, or a schedule of the summer holiday assistents (sorry for being slightly lazy with the translations here...).

And the raisin hot dog is a shining example of what? (sorry if I'm being thick now) A dog that is "raisin hot"? (at least then it also shows that sometimes the meaning will still indicate what is meant - a dog that is "raisin hot" is yet another level of absurdity compared to a hot dog with raisins)



> To be honest both "article newspaper" and "dog police" sound strange to me. It would seem more natural to say something like "dog support unit" or "dog handling section" of a particular police force.


They don't sound natural to the rest of us either - but they're possible and valid constructions, and could be used if you want to stress the contrast to a newspaper that doesn't have articles, or a police force that doesn't use dogs.


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## Wilma_Sweden

hanne said:


> And the raisin hot dog is a shining example of what?


It's a shining example of a three-part compound that is ambiguous: is it a hot dog served with raisins or simply a hot dog containing a sausage stuffed with raisins, or a hot dog containing a sausage looking like a raisin because it's been on the grill for too long? Don't forget that a hot dog in itself means sausage + bread, so if rosinpölse refers to the actual sausage, involving the hot dog makes it more confusing. I didn't suggest for a second that we would worry about canine dogs, since we don't normally eat them. If you were to ask a person from a culture where dogs are part of their cuisine, it would be a different matter, of course.

/Wilma


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## hanne

Wilma_Sweden said:


> It's a shining example of a three-part compound that is ambiguous: is it a hot dog served with raisins or simply a hot dog containing a sausage stuffed with raisins, or a hot dog containing a sausage looking like a raisin because it's been on the grill for too long?


Then we'd have the same lack of clarity in the Scandinavian languages though (rosinhotdog), you still have "hot dog" as the headword and "raisin" as the modifier - it just isn't clear what the modifier implies.
And when I was referring to canines before I didn't mean to eat them - just how they'd feel on a hot summer day .


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## The_Red_Lion

Wilma_Sweden said:


> Is canine used in the UK, or just America, as in canine police unit or K9 cops?
> 
> /Wilma


 
Canine police unit sounds a bit odd to me, but it's not a subject area that I have much contact with. Maybe some do use it, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

Personally I would associate K9 as being something from Doctor Who.


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## Wilma_Sweden

The_Red_Lion said:


> Personally I would associate K9 as being something from Doctor Who.


Hehe, definitely a US/UK difference, then...  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9_Cops

/Wilma


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## The_Red_Lion

> Hm, you're right that at least we don't have a problem with nearby adjectives getting caught up in the noun.


 
I hope I'm not drifting too far off topic, but isn't it possible to have ambiguity with succesive adjectives in Norwegian too.

For example, one of my grammar books says _Et lite pent ansikt_ can mean either:

1. a not very pretty face, or
2. a small pretty face.


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## Pteppic

The_Red_Lion said:


> I hope I'm not drifting too far off topic, but isn't it possible to have ambiguity with succesive adjectives in Norwegian too.
> 
> For example, one of my grammar books says _Et lite pent ansikt_ can mean either:
> 
> 1. a not very pretty face, or
> 2. a small pretty face.



Personally, I would write "a small pretty face" as *et lite, pent ansikt* (with a comma) to avoid such ambiguation. Sometimes, however, it can sometimes be difficult to make out the components of a compound word. I remember when my teacher wrote the words 

blåbærmos
eplemos 
turtermos

on the blackboard and cave us all a headache wondering about what the heck the last word meant. The first two mean mashed blueberries and mashed apples (mos = mash), leading us to believe that the last word was also some kind of mash. However, there is no such word as "turter" in Norwegian. The solution was of course, that the last word is actually tur-termos, i.e. a thermos for trips.


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