[...]... glossaries at the back of the book, English -Norwegian and Norwegian- English 4 The Norwegian- English glossary contains all the words appearing in the book, with two exceptions: words that are easily recognizable for learners with English as their mother tongue are omitted, as are certain words that are translated where they appear in the main body of the text The English -Norwegian glossary is not as comprehensive,... unlike English, Norwegian does not distinguish between the present simple tense (‘drives’) and the present progressive tense (‘is driving’) Norwegian only has the present simple tense, and so the translation of both verbal forms would be the same (that is, kjører) Exercise 5 Translate the following into English Then cover over the Norwegian text and translate your English passage back into Norwegian, comparing... glossary is not as comprehensive, although it contains all the words necessary for doing the exercises Nor does this list contain all information on Norwegian words, so, in order to discover, for example, inflections you will need to look up the Norwegian word in the NorwegianEnglish glossary The language Norway has a rather complicated language situation with two official written languages: bokmål and nynorsk... being neither particularly conservative nor particularly informal, as you will find in most textbooks The Norwegian alphabet The letters ‘c’, ‘q’, ‘w’, ‘x’ and ‘z’ are found in dictionaries, but do not really belong to the Norwegian alphabet and are only used in foreign loanwords On the other hand, Norwegian has three extra letters: ‘æ’, ‘ø’, ‘å’; these are placed at the end of the alphabet in that order... find many Norwegian words easily recognizable See if you can make sense of the following text, in which a Norwegian Håkon—talks about himself and his family Don’t worry about understanding every word, just the general sense If you’re really stuck, there’s a translation in the Key to exercises Vocabulary jeg heter bor gift med snakker norsk I’m called live(s), dwell(s) married to speak(s) Norwegian. .. paragraphs of explanation to describe Naturally, these patterns do not tell you every single thing about Norwegian word order, but they indicate a very practical and usable approach To go further would demand a far more comprehensive grammar You should take care to become familiar with the grammar in Colloquial Norwegian as it is introduced Each lesson is based on the assumption that you have understood the... Vanligvis snakker vi norsk COLLEAGUE: Do you speak other languages than Norwegian and English? HÅKON: Yes, luckily I also speak German COLLEAGUE: Unfortunately I don’t speak German, but I understand it What about your wife? HÅKON: Pamela? She speaks all languages! COLLEAGUE: Do you speak Norwegian or English at home? HÅKON: Usually we speak Norwegian Language points Word order in simple sentences Subject:... vocabulary and features which are built on They should not be ignored We, for our part, have tried to vary them so that you won’t get bored with them The key There are many different types of exercises in Colloquial Norwegian, and for some of them it is impossible to provide you with a key This applies particularly to those requiring a personal answer from you However, others can have other correct answers different... Norwegian, comparing your own Norwegian version with the original text Håkon er lærer Han er norsk, og han er gift med Pamela Pamela kommer fra England Hun er sekretær, og hun arbeider i Norge Hun snakker engelsk og norsk Exercise 6 Find all the verbs in the reading text on p 7 and put a v under each 11 Exercise 7 Write down the infinitive and the present tense of the Norwegian for the following verbs... 9 The vast majority of Norwegian verbs end in -r in the present tense, irrespective of their subject jeg snakker du/De snakker han snakker hun snakker det snakker I speak you speak he speaks she speaks it speaks vi snakker dere/De snakker de snakker we speak you speak they speak The infinitive Verbs in the vocabulary lists and glossary will appear in the infinitive, which in Norwegian almost always .