As I was looking at the city of Ålesund from above for the first time in a beautiful summer day, I was obviously thinking about how the three R’s of the environment- reduce, reuse and recycle – are used even in language.
In Norwegian, words are reused to their maximum potential and recycled so that we reach a point where you can form a perfectly good complex sentence by only using two words, if you are repeating them often enough. Moreover, they are reduced to two, maximum three letter words, as it is in the question Er det det det er?
What’s ironic is that all this effort is put into forming a rather redundant question meaning: Is this what this is?
Either way, cool to know. And to practice saying it faster and faster.
I am trying to think of a situation where the answer to that question would correctly be “no” (or the Norwegian equivalent thereof).
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“Is this what this is? Are you cheating on me?”
“No”(jumps out of bed and starts putting his/her clothes on), “this is not what it looks like.”
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short, precise and straight to the point.
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That’s how I roll 🙂
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Awesome! Short and sweet. Good to know too.
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I’m glad you liked it!
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I love how you were thinking something deep and interesting while looking out over the city. I’m the same way! My minds always looking for meaning in things. This was an interesting read. Thanks!
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This is a cool post. I adore norway too, which is huge bonus! 😉
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I love learning new things about Norway because that’s where my great grandparents were from! This is so interesting – short, simple, and to the point (sounds like my family haha)!
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That’s amazing, and quite a tongue twister. I can safely say I’ve learned something new today! Thanks!
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This is so funny but also a tongue twister!
Thanks for sharing this with us.
I think it’s an interesting language and I definitely wanto to visit Norway one day 🙂
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