One of the hallmarks of human language is its remarkable ability to grow into new situations, express ideas that never were needed or used before, and to adapt. One important way is to form new words (not the only adaptive means available to languages, but that's another story, altogether). In this lecture, I'd like to discuss some ways that Norwegian builds its vocabulary, and suggest that you can develop your sense of what many many words mean by understanding these word-formation processes.

The most common Norwegian prefixes are listed in Essentials on page 149. Some are pretty transparent. The prefix 'u-' is very similar to the English 'un-". It makes a negative out of the rest of the word. If you know gift 'married' you can easily guess u-gift "single". Some examples are less obvious, but still a bit transparent. Uforglemmelig means 'unforgettable'. Uendelig means 'unending'. With some imagination, you might make some intelligent guesses, for example Vær means 'weather' and uvær means stormy weather. I'll bet that vær once had a positive spin to it, thus uvær is negative. Lykke is 'luck' or 'happiness' while 'ulykke' is accident. Lykkelig means 'happy' ulykkelig means 'unhappy.' If 'ren' means clean, what do you think uren means?

The prefix 'mis' is very much like the English mis-. It gives the flavor of 'wrongly' or 'poorly'. Compare forstå 'understand' and misforstå 'misunderstand'. Or further lykkes 'to be successful' and mislykkes 'to be unsuccessful'. While bruke is use, misbruke is 'misuse' or 'abuse'. One last mis word: like vs mislike (which language am I writing in now?).

Sam- and sammen- are fairly common prefixes, generally having to do with a coming together of some sort. Arbeide is 'work' samarbeid is 'cooperation, working together.' Sammenheng is a connection or context -- where things 'hang together'. Ligne [likne] means to resemble, sammenligne [sammenlikne] means to compare. My two favorites: samtale 'conversation' and sammensvergelse 'cospiracy' -- remember sverge means 'swear, avow, take on oath'. So a conspiracy (the English etymology has the participants breathing together, but in Norwegian the participants 'swear allegiance' together. Neat, huh?

I can't fit this tidbit in neatly anywhere, so I'll mention it here. Sometimes Norwegian uses a fuller expression, then can use a shorter form, with a prefix. Here's what I mean. Jeg kjenner ham igjen means "I recognize him." So the phrase å kjenne igjen (roughly 'to know again') means to 'recognize.' In other contexts, the igjen shortens to 'gjen' and can attach itself to a form of 'kjenne'. So one can say (slightly more formal sounding) Jeg gjenkjenner ham 'I recognize him.' The noun form is: gjenkjennelse 'recognition.' So try to remain aware of this kind of variation.

The other prefixes listed in Essentials (an-, be-, for-, fore-, unn-, van-) are certainly valuable to know, but are less productive for you to be 'decoding' what words mean.

A large number of suffixes can be added to words, making meanings more or less abstract, changing words' parts of speech. Here, I'm not referring to the grammatical suffixes we've been dealing with as endings on nouns (-en, -er, -ene) or on verbs (-et, -dde), but rather word-based suffixes. English has a number of these suffixes, for example, -hood as in brotherhood, motherhood, childhood, or neighborhood. Below are some common Norwegian suffixes, with an indication of the ways they change the words. (In Essentials (pages 150-154), I have mixed together in one list both kinds of suffixes.) Where to start? How about -het (which people who know German recognize quickly). This suffix makes abstract nouns out of adjectives: ny 'new' nyhet 'news', fri 'free' frihet 'freedom'. -Skap makes abstract nouns from adjectives and verbs. Vite means 'to know-- a fact' so vitenskap means science. Egenskap 'peculiarity' -Dom forms nouns from adjectives, nons and verbs ung 'young' ungdom 'youth' barndom 'childhood.'

The suffix -er is used quite often to name someone who does something (usually or professionally). It is almost the same as English -er. En baker 'a baker'. Lærer 'teacher' from å lære 'to teach/ learn. I always enjoy the fact that Norwegian uses the same word for both teach and learn, and for anyone who has ever taught, we understand how much we learn by teaching! Forsker 'researcher' from å forske 'to reseach'. The plural forms for these -er nouns are a bit irregular and ought to be mentioned here -- at least in passing.

en baker 'a baker' bakeren 'the baker' bakere 'bakers' bakerne 'the bakers'

Before leaving suffixes, I need to mention two more. The common -else makes abstract nouns from verbs:

å begynne 'to begin' en begynnelse 'a beginning'. Å fortsette 'to continue' en fortsettelse 'a continuation'. Å misforstå 'to misunderstand' en misforståelse 'a misunderstanding.' What's an 'innsettelse'?

The last suffix like this I want to talk about now -- and reserve the right to come back to the topic later -- is the ending -ere that forms new verbs. When a new verb enters Norwegian, almost always has this ending -- linguists call this process 'productive'. (If you listen carefully to your computer or a native speaker, you'll hear that the stress is on the next to the last (penultimate) syllable. To take photographs is å fotografEre, the stress in indicated with the upper case E). I think the inauguration reading mentioned that people demonstrerte -- the infinitive is å demonstrere 'to demonstrate'. So for you, trying to make sense out of a reading, for sure if you see something verb-like and resembling an English verb, and it ends in -ere, it's a good bet that it *is* a verb. All -ere verbs have the endings:

-ere (å presentere), -erer (presenterer), -erte presenterte, -ert (har presentert).

I've heard some excitement and grumbling from you students about compound words -- those endlessly long words that make Norwegian so hard to take sometimes. So I want to talk a little about how the words are formed, and more importantly, offer some advice (however bad or insufficient) in taming those monsters.

Norwegian is much richer than English in compound words. While English frequently maintains separate words, the tendency in Norwegian is to join elements together into one word. The final element in the word determines the gender of compound nouns and the verbal class. The meaning of many compounds is transparent or predictable, however occasionally it is difficult to know exactly what the word means, even if you know all the elements. Good dictionaries list thousands of common compound words, but many more thousands are created ad hoc.

Here are a few examples with + showing where the words have been joined. then each type of connecting glue is discussed below.

lære + bok + spørsmål textbook questions

terminologi + utvikling the development of terminology

leve + om + kostning + s + klausuler cost of living restrictions

miljø + over + våking +s + systemer systems for safeguarding the environment

snau + hugge clear cut

Norwegian uses a hyphen to graphically join words in some compounds, for example:

ikke-kirkelig non-church

A hyphen joins two elements when one of the elements is a proper name: Norges-propaganda,

when one element is already very short tv-kanaler

to avoid three consonants: natt-tog, buss-stopp

when two elements are used in parallel, and they each combine with a third element:

bok- og papir handel 'book and paper shop'

Freds- og konfliktstudier'peace and conflict studies'

en definisjons- og rettskrivningsordbok 'a definition and orthographic dictionary

As glue between the words (and notice here we are talking about words, not suffixes or prefixes), Norwegian can sometimes just stick the two words together. This is the English fashion: book+case = bookcase (a case for books); hard+disk = harddisk (although my spell checker fusses). In Norwegian, some examples we've seen are: valg+kamp+rivalen = the election campaign rival; president+valget = president(ial) election; hoved+stad = main (head) city == capital. [This reminds me that sometimes compounds are slightly deceptive, and your intuition might or might not be 100% correct. But I encourage you to guess based on what you know about the elements' meanings.]

A second way to glue two words together is with the vowel -e-. The -e- helps ease pronunciation, rather than gives any necessary support to the meanings. skatt+e+lettelser == tax easing, lightening. The first noun is skatt, but even the Norwegians would be uncomfortable with 2 t's followed by an l. Gutt+e+navn = male name(s). katt+e+mat = cat food; barn+e+barn 'grandchild(ren)'. To tell you the truth, before I started looking for good examples of -e- compounds, I would have said that this was a very common, but I've been searching and searching (and reading all sorts of interesting irrelevant web sites) and haven't seen all that many.

Finally many compounds are joined by -s- glue. arbeid+s+uke = "work week"; inn+settelse+s+talen 'inaugural speech'. Samfunn+s+forskning 'society/ social science research'

HINTS, TIPS

So what's a poor student to do? Once again, be patient, read, read, read. I guess you need to be training your eyes to 1) recognize common words and elements, and 2) try to cut long words into smaller sections. But it's not always that easy, I know. I just looked at yahoo.no and found a few subheadings, which I'd like to discuss, and maybe tell you where you might be tempted to cut poorly.

Here are the sections from http://no.dir.yahoo.com/Sport_og_fritid/Reiseliv/:

• Reisebyråer
• Reiseeffekter
• Reisemålsguider
• Reiseskildringer
• Restauranter
• Ryggsekkturisme

The first thing I noticed when I browsed this list was that all but the last end in -er. I am guessing that these are plural nouns -- but of course other kinds of words (present tense verbs) can also end in -er. But we all recognize Restauranter, right? Then I noticed that the first 4 start with reise. I know (and you might not yet) that reise means 'travel.' But I know you might want to cut the first word like this: rei+s+ebyråer, or reis+e+byråer, or even reiseb+råer. Maybe, however if you noticed the subcategory reiseliv, you have started thinking that the common 'reise' hangs together as an element. That makes the first cut after reise+. I see more problems in Reiseskildringer, in that you might think the s before the kild is a 'gluing' s, not part of the elements themselves. I don't have any easy answer here, sorry. Except that as you learn more and more vocabulary (even if you don't memorize their meanings) you might learn that there is a word skildring. Or at least say it looks a tad bit familiar, and kildring doesn't look at all familiar. Keep in mind that -e- and -s- can either be glue or parts of the words. Try looking at the compound both ways. I often mis-cut some words when I first see them in Norwegian. But if I find myself saying 'huh?' then I try another visual solution. Remember that many compounds are in the dictionary, but give it a fair shot before turning those pages. Use your imagination and stretch your thinking about your growing (I assume) vocabulary. Here is a little comment Rachel Larson wrote about sikkerheten from the Bush article:

Good luck! Lykke til! Send me your comments.

Last modified: Thursday, January 25, 2001
© Louis Janus 2001
janus005@umn.edu