# Norwegian: No excuse not to vote today



## Grefsen

I would like to write the following på norsk:

The weather is perfect in Southern California and there is _no excuse not to vote in today's important election._

Mitt forsøk:

Været  er perfekt i Sør-California og det er ingen unnskyldning for ikke å  stemme i dagens viktige valget.


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## Tjahzi

I would say...

1. _er ingen -> finnes ingen_. This is a case of "existing" rather than "being".

2. _for ikke å stemme -> for å ikke stemme_. I believe the argument for this placement is that the negator is a part of the verb, like you could but it in English, _there is no excuse for not voting_. Seems English can do it both ways, Scandinavian just in one. 

3. _i dagens viktige valg_ -> _i dagens viktige valg_. This is actually a case of over using the definite (which is unusual, since it's normally the other way around. A literal translation of your line would be _in today's important the election._ And it sounds pretty much as wrong in Norwegian as it does in English.


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## vestfoldlilja

Grefsen said:


> Været  er perfekt i Sør-California og det er ingen unnskyldning for ikke å  stemme i dagens viktige valget.



This actually means the opposite of what you want to say, though it makes more sense to use a sentence like this if the weather were bad. 

Example: Været er veldig dårlig, men det er ingen unnskyldning for ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg. The weather is very bad, but that is no excuse for not voting at today’s important election. 

I would suggest this in Norwegian: Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og været er ingen unnskyld til ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg, or, Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og det er dermed ingen hindring til og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg.


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## Grefsen

vestfoldlilja said:


> This actually means the opposite of what  you want to say...





vestfoldlilja said:


> I would suggest this in Norwegian: Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og været er ingen unnskyld til ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg, or, Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og det er dermed ingen hindring til og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg.


Takk for gode forslag.  

In retrospect I wish I had taken more time to come up with a better sentence to translate from English to Norwegian.


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## hanne

Grefsen said:


> In retrospect I wish I had taken more time to come up with a better sentence to translate from English to Norwegian.


That comment leads me conveniently to what I wanted to say after reading your first post - and what I feel like saying regularly after reading your posts: You shouldn't be taking _any_ time at all to come up with an English sentence first. If you want to improve your Norwegian, you need to start putting your sentences into Norwegian directly as they come out of your mind, not have them go through English first. Translating is much more difficult, because you're already "trapped" in some English formulation, that it takes a lot of effort to get out of. It might take a bit of getting used to the thought the first couple of times, but you don't think I sat down and wrote this post in Danish first, and then translated the whole thing into English, do you? 



Tjahzi said:


> 2. _for ikke å stemme -> for å ikke stemme_. I believe the argument for this placement is that the negator is a part of the verb, like you could but it in English, _there is no excuse for not voting_. Seems English can do it both ways, Scandinavian just in one.


Well, I can't disagree with "Scandinavian just one", because "for ikke at stemme" is the only valid option in Danish! I think this is one of the cases where you can't easily generalise to Scandinavian. Vestfoldlilja also didn't correct this, so now of course I'm curious to know if Norwegian allows both...


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## Tjahzi

Firstly, I very much agree with hanne. 

And secondly, it's very interesting to hear that. As usual, I based my assumption on Swedish and presumed similarities with Norwegian. I would also like some more comments on my other suggestions since I was indeed not really _sure_ about any of them.


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## Havfruen

Grefsen, I agree with Hanne and Tjahzi and have wanted to say something similar as I've been reading your posts. You're far too advanced to be translating sentences from English! My advice is to find the simplest way to say things as this tends to be easier. You will obviously need to look up the translation of some words and occasionally phrases or fixed expressions.


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## vestfoldlilja

Tjahzi said:


> I would say...
> 
> 1. _er ingen -> finnes ingen_. This is a case of "existing" rather than "being".
> 
> 2. _for ikke å stemme -> for å ikke stemme_. I believe the argument for this placement is that the negator is a part of the verb, like you could but it in English, _there is no excuse for not voting_. Seems English can do it both ways, Scandinavian just in one.
> 
> 3. _i dagens viktige valg_ -> _i dagens viktige valg_. This is actually a case of over using the definite (which is unusual, since it's normally the other way around. A literal translation of your line would be _in today's important the election._ And it sounds pretty much as wrong in Norwegian as it does in English.



My thoughts.

1. I feel that _er ingen_, works better than _finnes ingen_. _Finnes_ could be used, but I feel it’s slightly off in this case because it refers to the weather and I would use _finnes_ when talking of something more tangible and stable. Perhaps others have different opinions and something to add. 

2. I hope I’m correct here and not blindly overlooking a point, but in Norwegian the infinitive marker can’t rightfully be placed in front of ikke, as it’s not a verb. It either needs to be _det er ingen unnskyldning til ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg_ eller _det er ingen unnskyldning til og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg. _

3. It makes no sense with a _i_ in that sentence, but when it’s changed to _ved_ the sentence works and makes perfect sense.


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## Tjahzi

Oh, this was interesting.

1. Actually, I think you might be misinterpreting that first part. As Grefsen says _there is no reason_, not _that (the weather) is no reason._ Vädret är ingen anledning att inte rösta, det finns ingen anledning att inte rösta! So, that said, are you still sure that _er > ingen_. I do agree about the oddness of saying _det finns inget väder_.

2. That makes sense considering hanne's input. Obviously, Norwegian/Danish and Swedish are different in this department. Further interesting is the fact that you do allow _og_ to be placed in front of _ikke,_ since the pronunciation of Swedish _att _is reduced in such a context to merely [ɔ] (that is, the standard pronunciation of _och_). Very interesting indeed!

3. Also interesting. _Vid_ would sounds horribly wrong in Swedish, but it technically makes sense. Note however, that the original attempt included _i_, I didn't add it. 
However, my point there was that _valg_ should be indefinite, which you seem to agree about, right?

Thanks!


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## Gink

vestfoldlilja said:


> 2. I hope I’m correct here and not blindly overlooking a point, but in Norwegian the infinitive marker can’t rightfully be placed in front of ikke, as it’s not a verb. It either needs to be _det er ingen unnskyldning til ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg_ eller _*det er ingen unnskyldning til og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg. *_


 
Ì could be wrong, but I`m pretty sure you can`t use "og" like that.

_Det er ingen unnskyldning til å ligge på stranden og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg._

_Det er ingen unnskyldning til ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg._

_"Og translates into "and"._


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## hanne

Tjahzi said:


> 1. Actually, I think you might be misinterpreting that first part. As Grefsen says _there is no reason_, not _that (the weather) is no reason._ Vädret är ingen anledning att inte rösta, det finns ingen anledning att inte rösta! So, that said, are you still sure that _er > ingen_. I do agree about the oddness of saying _det finns inget väder_.


Swedish uses finns _way_ more than Danish. I think Norwegian is in between somewhere, possibly closer to Danish. In Danish this would be a very definite "er", "findes" would sound very odd. "Vejret er perfekt og der er ingen undskyldning(er) for ikke at stemme ved dagens vigtige valg". (Danish might be a good illustration here, because we distinguish between "det" and "der", thus no potential misinterpretation)



> 2. That makes sense considering hanne's input. Obviously, Norwegian/Danish and Swedish are different in this department. Further interesting is the fact that you do allow _og_ to be placed in front of _ikke,_ since the pronunciation of Swedish _att _is reduced in such a context to merely [ɔ] (that is, the standard pronunciation of _och_). Very interesting indeed!


I'm with Gink on questioning this one - "og" doesn't make sense (then you need to have two things that are "combinable" or whatever you'd call it, one on each side of the "og"). It would make more sense if it was an "å" used "the Swedish way".



> 3. Also interesting. _Vid_ would sounds horribly wrong in Swedish, but it technically makes sense. Note however, that the original attempt included _i_, I didn't add it.
> However, my point there was that _valg_ should be indefinite, which you seem to agree about, right?


There was a typo in your first post "i dagens viktige valg -> i dagens viktige valg" so it wasn't clear which error you meant to point out, without looking back at the initial post (or reading your comment on it ). I think vestfoldlilja just picked out the one error she saw in there, rather than going back to check . (it's ved in Danish too, btw)


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## vestfoldlilja

Gink said:


> Ì could be wrong, but I`m pretty sure you can`t use "og" like that.
> 
> _Det er ingen unnskyldning til å ligge på stranden og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg._
> 
> _Det er ingen unnskyldning til ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg._
> 
> _"Og translates into "and"._



No, you're not wrong. 

 I’ve been trying to get my head around this and I’ve this to show for it. 

There is much information about og/å (in Norwegian) at these two links http://www.sprakrad.no/nb-no/Sprakhjelp/Skriveregler_og_grammatikk/Aa_eller_og/ and http://www.aftenposten.no/ekspertene/spraak/ I hope I have managed to express myself well enough in English to be understood. 

The general rule is that _å_, as infinitive marker in Norwegian stands in front of verbs that is in infinitive form. So, _å_, stands in front of; å gå (to walk), å hoppe (to jump), å lese (to read), å leke (to play). _Å_ does not stand in front of verbs when they occur in any other form: gikk (went), hopp (jump), leser (reading), lekte (played). 

_Og_ is placed between two words or group of words (infinitives as well) to connect them together with what comes before the _og_. 

Example: Jeg har så lyst til å lese og tegne. Both lese and tegne is in their infinitive form, but _å_ only stands in front of _lese_ because _og_ is used to connect _tegne_ with what came before it. 

There’s a rule of thumb to make it easier to figure out when to use _og/å _that is very well explained in the first link above, but the idea is that if you can change both verbs to their past tense the correct word is _og_, and if only one of them changes the correct word is _å_. 

This means that _å_ cannot be placed in front of _ikke_ as _ikke_ is not a verb. 

I agree that the sentence “det er ingen unnskyldning til og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg” doesn’t work. I did mean for that to have been a shortned version of  my whole original sentence: “Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og det er dermed ingen hindring til og ikke stemme ved dagens viktige valg”, but I see now that the sentence doesn’t work. Gink and Hanna were correct to point thia out and I’m sorry I got it wrong. 

In regards to the original sentence Grefsen wanted help with: The weather is perfect in Southern California and there is no excuse not to vote in today's important election, my first suggestion works: Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og været er ingen unnskyld til ikke å stemme ved dagens viktige valg.



Tjahzi said:


> 1. Actually, I think you might be misinterpreting that first part. As Grefsen says _there is no reason_, not _that (the weather) is no reason._ Vädret är ingen anledning att inte rösta, det finns ingen anledning att inte rösta! So, that said, are you still sure that _er > ingen_. I do agree about the oddness of saying _det finns inget väder_.



  When the weather is used as Grefsen did, the sentence loses all its meaning if that is not reason the sentence points back to. Why mention the weather if it has no bearing to the sentence? 

 If you just want to say that there isn’t any reason not to vote there is no point in dragging the weather into it. If the point is to say that since the weather is good you have no reason to stay indoors to avoid the weather as you might have been inclined to had the weather been bad then _er ikke_ is what works best in Norwegian. _Finnes ikke_ would work very well if all you want to express is that there is no reason at all not to vote. 



Tjahzi said:


> 3.However, my point there was that _valg_ should be indefinite, which you seem to agree about, right?



Yes, _valg _should be indefinitive.


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## Pteppic

The way I read Grefsen's original sentence, what he's saying is that there is no excuse not to vote, and with perfect weather you can't even claim that the trip to the polling station will be unpleasant. The nice weather underlines the lack of excuses rather than contributing to it, which seems clear (to me, at least) from the English wording ("there is", rather than "that is"). *Finnes ingen* makes complete sense to me.

Also, the preposition normally used with *unnskyldning* is *for*, like in Grefsen's original translation. 

Anyway, this is what I would write: *Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og det finnes ingen unnskyldning for å ikke stemme i dagens viktige valg.*


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## Tjahzi

Pteppic said:


> Anyway, this is what I would write: *Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og det finnes ingen unnskyldning for å ikke stemme i dagens viktige valg.*



Haha, that's exactly what I said from the beginning!


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## Grefsen

Pteppic said:


> The way I read Grefsen's original sentence, what he's saying is that there is no excuse not to vote, and with perfect weather you can't even claim that the trip to the polling station will be unpleasant. The nice weather underlines the lack of excuses rather than contributing to it, which seems clear (to me, at least) from the English wording ("there is", rather than "that is"). *Finnes ingen* makes complete sense to me.


As I mentioned before, I wish I had taken more time to come up with a better sentence, but I'm glad you understood the intended meaning of what I originally wrote in English.   



Pteppic said:


> Anyway, this is what I would write: *Været i Sør-California er perfekt, og det finnes ingen unnskyldning for å ikke stemme i dagens viktige valg.*


Takk for hjelpen *Pteppic* *og Tjahzi.*


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