# Norwegian: skulle



## kanakanake

Hei! 

I came across this sentence "Her skulle jeg gjerne bo". My question is, why is the use of the infinitive necessary? Couldn't we use "skal" instead?

Takk!


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## Dan2

Hi kanakanake,

Welcome to WRF.

The infinitive in this sentence is "bo".  But I think you're asking about "skulle".  "skulle" is both an infinitive and a finite form.  Since it has a subject here ("jeg"), the word is clearly not being used as an infinitive in this case.

I would compare the sentence to English, "Here would I like to live", but I'll leave it to others to suggest the optimal translation of this sentence and also of the sentence with "skal".


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## kanakanake

Thank you for the welcome! 

Indeed my question is about the infinitive form of skulle. In my grammar book skulle is referred to as infinitive and up to now I have only seen skal as the main verb. 
And if they can both be used, what's the difference?
The translation is pretty clear, the grammar is what confuses me! 

Thanx again


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## svoboda

Skulle is being used here as an auxiliary verb. So whereas "jeg skal"  translates as "I will/shall", jeg skulle translates as "I should" .. So in this sentence it is "I should really like to live here", although as Dan2 points out, I guess we'd be more likely to use would instead of should in this sentence.


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## NorwegianNYC

It is actually a subjunctive. Yes, it is a conditional (technically a "hypothetical conditional") , but it more or less serves the same purpose


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## Ben Jamin

NorwegianNYC said:


> It is actually a subjunctive. Yes, it is a conditional (technically a "hypothetical conditional") , but it more or less serves the same purpose



In what way is it a subjunctive?


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## kanakanake

I think it makes sense now. I haven't learnt the conditionals in Norwegian yet, so there is a lot more work ahead!

Takk for hjelpen


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## NorwegianNYC

Ben Jamin said:


> In what way is it a subjunctive?



Hi Ben Jamin

It is a "subjunctive" in the sense Norwegian does not have a subjunctive mood in itself, but relies on other tenses of the verb (especially preterit and conditional of modal auxiliary verbs) to express the same sentiment. Kanakanake's sentence clearly expresses a wish, thus a subjunctive mood, although the way it is expressed may belong to a different tense.


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## Ben Jamin

NorwegianNYC said:


> Hi Ben Jamin
> 
> It is a "subjunctive" in the sense Norwegian does not have a subjunctive mood in itself, but relies on other tenses of the verb (especially preterit and conditional of modal auxiliary verbs) to express the same sentiment. Kanakanake's sentence clearly expresses a wish, thus a subjunctive mood, although the way it is expressed may belong to a different tense.



I am really in doubt if the sentence "Her skulle jeg gjerne bo" is actually a subjunctive construction. As you have pointed out, Norwegian does’nt have a morphological subjunctive mood (except for some fossilized expressions like “gud bevare”), only subjunctive constructions. These constructions are often difficult to distinguish from conditional constructions, as they use the same form of the verb. 
(According to Wikipedia "In grammar, the *subjunctive mood* (abbreviated *sjv* or *sbjv*) is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred.")

In my opinion "Her skulle jeg gjerne bo" is an incomplete conditional sentence. The complete one would be “Her skulle jeg gjerne bo _(ders)om jeg kunne_".


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## NorwegianNYC

Hi,

Yes, I agree that if it is an incomplete sentence, and the final part is a condition, it is a conditional. However, how do we classify the sentence as is? I am partial to interpret "Her skulle jeg gjerne bo" as wish, thus subjunctive.


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## kanakanake

Actually, this is the whole sentence as I wrote it...


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## Ben Jamin

kanakanake said:


> Actually, this is the whole sentence as I wrote it...


Of course it is, but popular sentences are often a shortening of a longer one.


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## Ben Jamin

NorwegianNYC said:


> Hi,
> 
> Yes, I agree that if it is an incomplete sentence, and the final part is a condition, it is a conditional. However, how do we classify the sentence as is? I am partial to interpret "Her skulle jeg gjerne bo" as wish, thus subjunctive.



This sentence may morphologically be interpreted as being both conditional and subjunctive. The function is, however, optative. The morphological optative mood, present in the PIE lanuage, has now disappeared from most of IE languages. In the languages that have a morphological subjunctive mood (for example the Romance languages) the subjunctive is used mostly to express a wish of somebody else doing something, or for subordinate clauses (i thought that I would like to live here) but for sentences like "Her skulle jeg gjerne bo" the conditional is most often used.


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## NorwegianNYC

Ben Jamin,

I agree that it is optative, but since the optative mood went out of style in the Germannic languages (that is, it merged or morphed into subjunctive) 2500 years ago, thus left sunjunctive as the only form, the sentence "Her skulle jeg gjerne bo" can be said to either be a truncated conditional, or a subjunctive in its optative aspect.


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