r/norsk • u/dwchandler • Sep 20 '20

Søndagsspørsmål #350 - Sunday Question Thread

This is a weekly post to ask any question that you may not have felt deserved its own post, or have been hesitating to ask for whatever reason. No question too small or silly!

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u/knoberation Native speaker Sep 21 '20 edited Sep 21 '20

What's the difference between firma, bedrift and foretak?

These are slightly technical terms. For the lay person I don't think there is a big difference between firma and bedrift in daily use, and I don't know what the technical difference is (if any).

I think foretak refers to the legal entity of a company rather than the company itself. I wouldn't use foretak unless I'm getting into some technicality.

What's the difference between annerledes and forskjellig?

I would use forskjellig when comparing two things which are different, and annerledes when talking about something which is in itself different, but not necessarily compared to something specific.

  • "I'm looking for something different" - "Jeg ser etter noe annerledes"
  • "Those two are completely different" - "De to er helt forskjellige"

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u/helpwithlanguagepls Sep 22 '20

thank you so much :D

one more question if you dont mind:

can you explain when and how we use sin, seg, deg and selv?

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u/knoberation Native speaker Sep 22 '20 edited Sep 22 '20

Sin is one of several words used to define ownership.

  • Min/mi/mitt - my
  • Din/di/ditt - your
  • Sin/si/sitt - their

Which one you use depends on the gender of the object and who or what the subject is. You use sin if you are talking about a third person's ownership of a masculine noun. I.e "Det er Petter sin fotball". You could also say "Det er Petters fotball" similar to how you would say "That's Petter's football" in English. With the English "their" it's not natural to structure the sentence in the same way as in the first example, but in Norwegian with "sin" you have to specify who or what you're talking about when you use it.

Meg/deg/seg translate to myself/yourself (or yourselves)/theirself (or themselves). You sometimes have the same usage of these words in English as in Norwegian, i.e. "They washed themselves" - "De vasket seg". In Norwegian, my experience is that these words are required in far more contexts than in English. I.e. in English you would say "I got dressed", in Norwegian you would say "Jeg kledde på meg".

Selv translates to self, but it is used like myself/yourself etc in some contexts. I.e "Do it yourself" - "gjør det selv" or "I haven't experienced that myself" - "Jeg har ikke opplevd det selv".

I'm not sure about this, but maybe meg/seg/deg are used when myself/yourself etc would be the object of the sentence, and selv is used otherwise.