# Norwegian: Mange tenker at billig mat er halvfabrikat og usunt.



## vidar

Mange tenker at billig mat er halvfabrikat og usunt.

Why usun*t *if mat isn't neuter?


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## raumar

That's a good question! It is possible, in some cases, to use the neuter form of adjectives even though the noun isn't neuter, usually when you describe food as good, healthy, unhealthy etc. See:
2 Ny grammatikk - NTNU

But "Billig mat er usunn" is also correct, and would work just as well in this sentence. 

By the way, the use of "tenker" in this sentence is traditionally seen as incorrect, but it has become widespread -- probably because of influence from English. I would prefer "tror", "synes" or "mener", depending on the context. See:
Å tenke i tide og utide

I was also surprised to see "halvfabrikat". I don't think I have ever seen this form of the word before, only "halvfabrikata". But when I checked my dictionary, I found that "halvfabrikata" is the plural definite form of this noun, while "halvfabrikata is plural indefinite.


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## winenous

raumar said:


> while "halvfabrikata is plural indefinite.


I think you meant "*halvfabrikat* is plural indefinite". Not that I had ever heard of the word before - but my ignorance lead me to look it up too!


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## raumar

winenous said:


> I think you meant "*halvfabrikat* is plural indefinite".



Yes, you are of course right. Thanks for the correction!


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## vidar

Just for clarity - the sentence was an example from a news article on VG. Maybe it's 'paper speak'?


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## raumar

No. I don't think it's "paper speak". I found the article here, on TV2's website: 
Marie (25) og samboeren bruker til sammen 2000 kroner på mat i måneden

Did you mean that "tenker" was "paper speak"?  This use of "tenker" has spread far beyond newspapers. In this case I would have used "tror" (as in the next paragraph), because the author means to say that many people (incorrectly) believe that cheap food is unhealthy. 

Regarding the use of "halvfabrikat" , this might come from the person who is interviewed. She has a master's degree in public health science, so it may be professional jargon.  I think most people would say "halvfabrikata", regardless of what the dictionary says. As winenous has shown, the other forms exist, but I have never seen them before.


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## myšlenka

raumar said:


> But "Billig mat er usunn" is also correct, and would work just as well in this sentence.


I think I would disagree with this. Would you really accept something like:
_Billig fisk er god.
Solformørkelse er fin._
?


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## raumar

That's interesting. Yes, "_Billig fisk er god_" looks OK to me, but I would certainly not accept "_Solformørkelse er fin_", or "_Ørret er god_". In these cases it has to be the neuter form.

So, why do I feel that "_Billig fisk er god_" is OK? I don't know the grammar here, but "_Billig fisk smaker god_" does not work at all -- here it has to be "_godt_".  I think I see "_Billig fisk er god_" as parallel to "_All mat er god_" (as my mother used to tell me, when I was a child and did not like the food). Or maybe "_Billig fisk er god_" is a short version of "_Billig fisk er god fisk_".

By the way, we have discussed some of these issues before:
Norwegian: adjectives after unquantifiable nouns


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## winenous

Isn't "Billig fisk smaker godt" different to all the other examples, because in this context "godt" is an adverb?

At a more serious grammatical level, it seems that gender shifts between mass and countable nouns occur in a number of languages. In Norwegian the obvious example that still exists is the word _øl_.

I wonder if the use of neuter adjectives in the cases noted here are some sort of hangover of old gender changes, with the usage still not totally consistent.

(Happy to be shot down on that speculation. My shallow knowledge on the subject comes from Mr Google, and this search hit:
Nominal Classification


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## raumar

winenous said:


> because in this context "godt" is an adverb


Of course! I should learn to think before I write. Again thanks for the correction!



winenous said:


> I wonder if the use of neuter adjectives in the cases noted here are some sort of hangover of old gender changes, with the usage still not totally consistent.


Well, someone who knows more about the history of the Norwegian language should answer this. But I doubt that this is the case, because you see it for all kinds of masculine and feminine nouns.


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