# Norwegian, basic stuff



## 涼宮

Good evening everyone, I am new here, and learning norwegian, perhaps I will be very tiresome with my questions as on internet I cannot find next to nothing about norwegian, and I do not have money for real material so I have a lot of doubts. If you do not mind I will start.

All my questions are concerning to bokmål

1) How can I distinguish the verbs in norwegian? I have read something about weak and strong verbs.

2) What is the standart rule to form the past tense in norwegian?


3) What is the verb ''to know'' in norwegian? because the dictionary makes me confuse, for instance in these two contexts:

I know her
I know spanish,/ I don't know nothing about him.

4) I was told that in norwegian does not exist the gerund, there is not any way to form it?, I mean in complicated contexts, I do not have any right now but, I am not sure, norwegian uses a kind of auxiliary like German uses ''gerade''?


Mange takk!
And sorry for the inconveniences.


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## Cerb

Hi and welcome 

Some of these questions are a bit tricky, but I'll give it a go. Hopefully someone will be able to correct and add to what I write. 

*1.&2.* Weak verbs get an ending in past tense. Strong verbs do not, but change vowel. Weak verbs use -et, -de, -te or -dde to form past tense. 
Using this dictionary you can find out what type it is (v1, v2 etc) and look it up in the legend

http://www.dokpro.uio.no/ordboksoek.html
http://www.dokpro.uio.no/bob_forkl.html (legend)

Some weak verbs are notorious for being conjugated as strong even by Norwegians 

*3.* "Å vite" is the most literal translation, but I'd use "kan" (can) here. "Kan/kunne/kunnet" is an auxiliary verb of course, but in this case the verb is implied and can be dropped. 

"I can speak Spanish" = "Jeg kan snakke spansk"

"I know Spanish" = "Jeg kan (snakke) spansk"

I'm coming up a bit short of other situations where "kan" is used like this. 

*4.* I'll have to come back to this one. At the top of my head, we just use the infinitive, but I'm sure we have some typical phrases. I'll try to think of some examples. 

If you speak Spanish you'll probably find this online dictionary useful by the way 

www.tritrans.net


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## 涼宮

Mange takk, I will be waiting for the number 4.


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## Vikingo

4) is a big can of worms, since the definitions are blurry and aren't always compatible between languages.

But here are some pointers I hope can be of help anyway 

What Spanish calls gerundio ("hablando"), and English calls the present participle ("talking"), is formed in Norwegian by adding the suffix -ende. Snakkende, gående, hoppende. However, in Norwegian it's not used to form a continuous aspect of the verb, but is used with other functions (adverbs, adjectives etc.)

What English calls the gerund ("speaking is easy"), and is often expressed in Spanish with the infinitive, is in Norwegian also expressed with the infinitive. However, there is an additional form where the noun can be formed by the verb by adding the suffix "-ing". "Snakking er lett" in this case, though "Å snakke er lett" sounds somewhat better to me here. If we want to compare this to Spanish, the difference resemble where you choose "El hablar" instead of "Hablar". Sometimes only one of the forms apply ("Nå er det nok snakking").

Hope this helps


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## 涼宮

Mange takk, So you are saying in that case in which english tends to use gerund(present continious) and Spanish uses the article in norwegian uses the article too?

Doing that will not help you.
El hacer eso no te ayudará
that case in norwegian is expressed by infinitive?

But what would happen in this context in norwegian?

Having said that you cannot do it again.
Habiendo dicho eso no lo puedes hacer de nuevo.
How could you express that?


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## Vikingo

That's often the case, but I'm not giving any guarantees 

In your sentence above, however, yes, you can express the same in Norwegian by saying "Å gjøre det[te] vil ikke hjelpe deg".


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## Grefsen

_Velkommen til nordiske språkforumet_* 涼宮!*_ 



涼宮 said:



			Good evening everyone, I am new here, and learning norwegian, perhaps I will be very tiresome with my questions...
		
Click to expand...

It is always nice to have someone new join the forum and your questions are  very welcome here. 

I realize that there are a lot of forum rules to learn, especially in the beginning, but since I have been posting here for nearly 3 1/2 years, I wanted to share with you that one of the most important forum rules is  *"One topic per thread."*

The questions you have asked are all good ones, but in the future it would be best to open a different thread for each question.  There is nothing you need to do right now, but  *Wilma_Sweden*, the Nordic Language moderator, may decide to split this thread into separate threads for each question.

Keep up the good work and *"lykke til!"* 
_


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## 涼宮

Acknowledged Grefsen, for next one I will open a post per question but will be many posts because I have many questions jaja

Mange takk og ha det!


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## Vikingo

涼宮 said:


> But what would happen in this context in norwegian?
> 
> Having said that you cannot do it again.
> Habiendo dicho eso no lo puedes hacer de nuevo.
> How could you express that?


 
This is where it would depend on the context - who's saying what, etc., but in Norwegian I would probably go for something like "Etter at det er sagt.." or "etter å ha sagt det" (=después de haber dicho eso), for example. I don't see any of the Norwegian forms mentioned above working out of the box in this case.

But I think you're going to have to open a new thread for more examples


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## Grefsen

涼宮 said:


> Acknowledged Grefsen, for next one I will open a post per question but will be many posts because I have many questions jaja


It is perfectly fine to open up several new threads at once, but if you have more than five questions, then it is usually a good idea to wait a few hours before opening more threads because there is actually another forum rule that discourages "flooding."  



> No flooding. If you post several threads, do your best to ensure  that  no more than 5 of them appear on the front page of a forum at any one  time. This  allows other members' threads to get their share of attention.


When I first started posting here I would sometimes get a bit frustrated with there being so many forum rules, but eventually I got used to them...well at least most of them. 



涼宮 said:


> Mange takk og ha det!


Ha en fin helg!  

(Have a nice weekend!)


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