Sentence Structures

The Good Teacher Inga asked me one day to tell our entire Norwegian class what I did on Saturday – in Norwegian, of course. It was a humbling experience. I know many verbs. I know a lot of nouns. I even know all the pronouns in objective and subjective form. I know how to say nouns as singular or plural. I know how to say verbs past tense or present tense, but I have yet to figure out how to form a proper sentence.




When I was learning Spanish in college, the big thing to remember was the adjective comes after the noun – they don’t say “green tree” – they say “tree green.” If only Norwegian could be that simple. They have all kinds of things mixed up. Their “the”s come after the noun (“tree the”) the negative comes after the verb (“married NOT”), and the second word in the sentence always HAS to be a verb. Their word order (sentence structure) is completely different than English and even now I’m still clueless.



Whenever I write something down and read it to Kory he reminds me I can’t just take an English sentence word for word and translate it to Norwegian – I have to translate the entire sentence and “think like a Norwegian.” OK, “I have it out figured NOT.” Lord help me the day I start thinking like the Norwegians!



I do get a kick out of some of the words Norwegians use to name things though. You can clearly see their thinking when (translated) they named a pencil sharpener a “pencil eater,” and an eraser a “learning wash.”



When we sing songs in church, they will have a song on the overhead with words that have just one to three letters in them – jeg, vil, liv, får, håp, alt, meg, gud, så, med, du, i, å, det, om… so many small words that mean so much. But when I go to school, I see words that should be an entire sentence in themselves – like “voksenopplæringssenter,” which translated means “the grown-up people’s higher learning center.”



I guess the Norwegian’s solution to the dilemma I face, is to combine all the complicated words into just one word rather than to try and figure out where all those words would go in the sentence. Maybe I should start thinking like a Norwegian after all.

Rain

A lot of emphasis was put on learning the words for weather in my Norwegian class. It’s the number one topic of conversation in Norway, especially along the coast where we lived. The Good Teacher Inga wanted to be sure we knew all the possible ways to say just how horrible of a day we were having. (We even learned the word for “complain.”) One day we learned the expression to use when it’s raining about as hard as it can. In America we might say “It’s raining cats and dogs,” but in Norway they say it’s raining “Trollkjerring” – which literally translated means it’s raining “female trolls.”




I almost felt like I’d stepped into that zone where the Eskimos in Alaska have 26 words to describe snow. It’s something like that in Norway – they are far more descriptive in their weather words (especially on the types of possible rain) than we are in America, but one day The Good Teacher Inga simplified things for us and said there are usually just two seasons in Norway – the white winter and the green winter. I thought that was pretty funny.



We started many school days off singing a song about rain. We even memorized a poem about playing in the rain. Norwegians do everything in the rain and even though they get a lot of it, the residents of Aalesund (where we lived) take great consolation in the fact that Bergen always gets more.



Even when it was pouring down rain and I often saw entire families out for bike rides all dressed in raingear from head to toe.



Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I was raised that if the sun is out, I should be out in it. When I moved to California to go to college, I didn’t clean my house for a whole year as I kept waiting for a rainy day to stay indoors and clean. It finally dawned on me that it wasn’t ever going to rain so I should probably get busy. It was the opposite in Norway - I eventually bought some rain pants so I could go out walking with friends.



We had pretty good weather the year we lived in Norway though. The year before we arrived it rained nearly every day. As Kory’s cousin was summing up how bad that year had been he said, “Summer came, but I was sitting on the toilet, so I missed it.”

Standardized Foods

Theresa, a friend I made while living in Norway, told me that it’s very important for Norwegians to feel “safe” and in control of the foods they eat. She said they get great comfort from the predictability of having the same foods over and over their entire lives. Her grandfather, who is in his eighties, only wants his fish cooked one certain way – boiled in salt water – with no sauces or other flavorings on it whatsoever. Boy does that sound like my husband, who is in his sixties.




When we were first married, I made Kory some blackened fish which I thought was fantastic, but Kory quickly informed me that he likes his “fish to taste like fish.” I tried my favorite lemon chicken recipe on him from a gourmet cookbook and I got “I like my chicken to taste like chicken.” And so I learned… Norwegians aren’t into spices or any kind of fancy foods… they just boil something in salted water and call it good.



Theresa told me her grandfather refused to try any of the “new foods” that have entered Norway these past few years – like pasta or rice – but she did talk him into having a piece of pizza once. Only once.



The whole food thing in Norway is so weird (and boring), but they obviously have gotten used to some basic foods and it works for them. In America, we want different things all the time and the packages here are always changing because things are “new and improved.” In Norway they brag that they DON’T change the food - “original recipe since 1971,” is says on the package.



Change is NOT good when it comes to food in Norway. Norwegians find something they like and they stick with it. I guess it comes from a tradition of not having many options, as it’s only been recently that faster transportation has been able to bring other kinds of foods into the country and then combine that with the fact that change obviously happens very slowly when such stubborn people are involved in the process.



Kory was very pleased when I told him what my friend Theresa shared with me about Norwegian’s attitude toward food. He felt so validated. But he was even more pleased when I made him salmon for dinner that night, with boiled potatoes and boiled carrots using no spices whatsoever. Our marriage is safe.

Words for Stores

After we spent far too much time in my Norwegian class learning words for different colors, The Good Teacher Inga decided to also teach us the names for the different kinds of stores. Everyone began to yell out the names of stores they knew, or they yelled out English names, wondering what it’s called in Norwegian – like a butcher shop, hardware store, etc.




There was one woman in our class, Valentina, that never participated in any of that kind of dialog as she can’t speak a word of English and perhaps only two words of Norwegian. She is from Russia, and she’s a fairly hunched over, wrinkled up little old woman who never understood a thing that was going on. I was shocked to learn she was only 55, because looking at her, I was sure she was 70. Whenever she was called upon to give an answer, she just nervously looked back and forth over her shoulder hoping the person behind her would pipe up, or she’d look to other Russian women in the room to translate just what it was she was supposed to say, then she’d always shake her head, look down, and say nothing.



The day we learned about the names of stores was the first time she spoke in class. We had the names of every possible specialty store written up on the board and were about to go on to the next subject, when this little old Russian lady pipes up very loudly and shouts out in perfect English, “sex shop!” The entire classroom burst out with hysterical laughter and The Good Teacher Inga couldn’t bring herself to even say a word for at least five minutes as she kept doubling over with tears streaming down her face. It was the most unexpected input, from the least likely source. Valentina didn’t even laugh herself as she was completely clueless as to why it was so funny.



I told Kory this story when he got home from work. I also lamented over the fact that all the women in my class are married to Norwegian men and it’s obvious there is no possible way for many of them to be communicating with their husbands as they don’t know any Norwegian and their English is negligible. Kory said to me, “I don’t know why you are so shocked by it. It’s the perfect relationship.”

Washing Clothes

Most bathrooms in Norway are huge and they all have heated floors. In some houses, the bathrooms are bigger than the bedrooms. The reason for their massive size is because the majority of bathrooms also double as the laundry room. Washing machines in the bathroom are as common as the toilet, sink and shower. Dryers are rare, however, because electricity is so expensive, no one uses them. The bathrooms have to be big because their needs to be enough room to hang up all the clothes on an inside clothes line and still have a clear path to the toilet. I often found it tedious to hang up each individual sock or pair of underwear, and our bathroom was so huge, I just laid all the wet clothes down on the heated floor and they were dry in no time. Weird system, but it works. The warm floors were a treat.




Some lucky people do own clothes dryers, but they are much different than the ones we have in America. The Norwegian clothes dryers are more like water extractors. There are no external dryer vents so there isn’t much heat involved in the drying process. Somehow the dryer sucks out the remaining water in the clothes into this long container inside the machine. It’s often necessary to empty the container once or twice before the clothes are dry. Drying a load of clothes in the “dryer” takes about four hours. Washing the clothes takes at least two.



One day in my Norwegian class we learned about all the names for colors. One woman was wearing a pretty pink top and when The Good Teacher Inga called it “rosa” the woman wearing the top said, “It used to be red” (rød). I later asked her if it turned pink since she’s been in Norway and she nodded and we both had a good laugh. Norwegian washing machines are notorious for ruining clothes. They are sophisticated enough that one can select how many revolutions per second the machine spins the clothes (all washers are front loaders), but they have no cold water setting. The lowest water temperature possible is 90 degrees. The temperature settings go up by ten degree increments all the way to boiling. The colors in the clothes fade quickly, but it was still a pretty shade of pink my classmate was wearing that day, at least until she washed it again.

Får i Kål Day

September 25th is national “Får i Kål” (“lamb in cabbage”) Day in Norway. Får i kål is considered their “national dish.” A lot of people eat Får i Kål on September 25th, and on Sundays, and maybe every time they have company. The Norskies love that stuff. It’s as Norsk as Norsk gets, so the Norwegian government felt like they needed to set aside a special day every year to acknowledge it.




All the stores have the two ingredients used to make it on sale starting in mid-September, and if a person didn’t already own a pot big enough to cook it in, they go on sale, too. The newspapers print the recipe just in case someone might have lost theirs. I’m so thankful, because if someone would have just TOLD me how to make it, I’m not sure I could have remembered (just kidding).



I caved under the pressure of the day when we were living there, and made it for dinner. Kory said it was almost as good as his Mama used to make. How could it taste any different – it has just two ingredients?



To make it, place some water in the bottom of a pot, layer cabbage leaves with chunks of a poor baby lamb (…that gave it’s very life for sustaining the people of Norway and their traditional dish), and keep layering cabbage leaves and lamb until there is no more. Pour in enough water to cover the ingredients, add some salt and pepper, put a lid on the pot and bring it to a boil. When it boils, simmer it for a few hours and it’s done. It’s served with potatoes and carrots on the side. Kory and Kaleb love it (they are WAY more Norwegian than I). I felt like I had done my part in making it, so I opted out of eating it. (My birth name is “Mary” so it is just too heartbreaking for me to actually eat “a little lamb.”) Instead I ate the latest “National Dish of Norway” (based on call-in votes to a radio station) – frozen pizza.



The only problem during dinner was that I still had to smell what Kory and Kaleb were eating. My Norsk teacher recommended I set a bowl of vinegar next to the pan of Får i Kål while it was cooking so it wouldn’t stink up the house so much – but I dumped it out when the cooking was over, not thinking I’d need it to get through dinner, too. The things I do for love.

Word Associations

Oops - I forgot to post this last week!  Sorry.

We had several lessons on Norwegian foods in my Norwegian class during a week The Good Teacher Inga was gone and we had a substitute. The substitute teacher taught us that certain foods last longer than others and that’s why so many fresh produce items aren’t available in Norway – because they won’t survive the trip so far north (like I hadn’t figured that one out already.) She also told us about some foods that become poisonous after awhile. Of course she was talking only in Norwegian (not ever sneaking in an English word here and there to help our comprehension, like The Good Teacher Inga did), and I heard the substitute say a word that she used a few days earlier when she was talking about families (we had to learn the names of family members on that particular day.) The word that caught my attention was “gift” (pronounced “yift.”) It’s the Norwegian word for “married,” but as we all learned during our food lesson, it’s also the Norwegian word for “poison.”




I brought up the irony of “gift” being used for both “married” and “poison” and asked the substitute why that would be. I got her to think a minute, but she was not able to answer my question. There were several Spanish speaking students in our class too, so I also pointed out that the Spanish word “esposa” means “wife,” but it also means “handcuffs.” I don’t like those associations one little bit, but I must say, it makes certain words easier to remember – like the English word “but” is “men” in Norwegian.



There are so many things to remember with a new language, I must do what I can to help the process. But why a “child” is called “barn” in Norwegian, I have no idea. I know as a kid, my mom used to ask me if I was “born in a barn” when I left the door open, so maybe there’s something there -- she is full blooded Norwegian, after all.



We studied weather words that week too, and if it’s cloudy they say in Norwegian it’s “skyet” (pronounced “she-it”). Here all these years I thought my mom was swearing when she’d say a certain word in a particular kind of way, but as it turns out, it seems, she was just talking about the weather.