Framtiden i fortiden // Future in the past (tense)

[Rathael87]

Hei alle sammen I'm new to the forum and norsk.

I started learning norsk about 2 weeks ago after falling head-over-heels in love with a Norwegian girl who recently asked to be my girlfriend. She has flawless English but I can't help but want to give her language a try. I would love to visit the country some day too.

I picked up a copy of "Norwegian - Verbs & Essentials of Grammar" by Louis Janus and also "Norwegian - An Essential Grammar" by Åse-Berit and Rolf Strandskogen. Both books have been very useful so far, but I always find I need extra input with the more complicated concepts of grammar.

In particular I have been having trouble with continuous tense. The present participle is generously used in english for many different functions, so I find myself unable to directly translate quite often. Usually I am able to rephrase the English sentence to be able to directly translate it (with some word order guidance from either my books or the girl i mentioned). However I have found one sentence that I really am not sure how to translate:

"What were you going to say?"

In English this is known as the "future in the past" tense. In this particular form it employs the past participle "going" - something that can't be translated directly to norsk. I'm fairly sure this is a noun-clause type sentence where "you going to say" (shown underlined above) acts as a noun-clause.

The meaning I am trying to convey is to ask the listener about something that they had origionally planned to do but ended up not doing by the time the question was asked. How can I achieve the same meaning in norsk?

[Aleco]

Hello and welcome to the Norwegian subforum! It seems like you found the best reason for learning a new language

As for this grammatical construction, we actually do it in the same way as English. The future tense of an action that you've decided will happen, is maked with å skulle (skal in the present tense)*. So the way to say this particular sentence in Norwegian, would be "Hva skulle du si?" (or not as literary and awkward: Hva var det du skulle si? = What was it you were going to say?).

* Where no volition is present, we use å ville or å komme til to form the future tense.

[Noreviking]

I agree with Aleco, I would translate it just like he did above. You beat me to it, Aleco

Velkommen til det norske forumet, og lykke til med å lære deg norsk, Rathael87!

[Rathael87]

Wow! That is a fantastic answer. Tusen Takk! You gave me far more information than I hoped for. I was just reading about "å komme til" in the Louis Jane grammar book but it did not explain the type of context that the idiom was appropriate for. It only explained vaguely that it was similar to "going to" in English... so again, thankyou very much!

Thankyou Noreviking! and thankyou for confirming.

[Rathael87]

Sorry if double posts are against the forum policy. I thought of a further question related to the answer..

"Hva var det du skulle si?" is effectively using two tenses. "Hva var det" is past tense, ånd "du skulle si" is a conditional. Would it still sound correct if I use conditional perfect instead? In other words..

"Hva var det du skulle ha sa?"

What meaning does this convey? If any. Does this mean "what was it you should have said?"?

[Aleco]

Sorry if double posts are against the forum policy. I thought of a further question related to the answer..

"Hva var det du skulle si?" is effectively using two tenses. "Hva var det" is past tense, ånd "du skulle si" is a conditional. Would it still sound correct if I use conditional perfect instead? In other words..

"Hva var det du skulle ha sa?"

What meaning does this convey? If any. Does this mean "what was it you should have said?"?

No, I'd say it's okay to double post if you think editing your last post may result in it getting overlooked. Alternatively, you could edit your old post and add something new, copy all of this, delete the post and make a new and paste it in there. It's a bit of a roundabout way of doing it, but it works, and you avoid the double posting. I love how you wrote ånd, though

You are correct, although you used the simple past of å si instead of the perfect participle, which is understandable as they're the same in English.

Hva var det du skulle [ha] sagt?
= What was it you should have said

The ha is actually not required in this particular conjugation, and I would say that most people leave it out, especially in speech, although it really doesn't matter what you choose to do. I tend to use it to add more words to my essays.

Summarized:
Hva var det du skulle si? = What were you going to say?
Hva var det du skulle sagt? = What should you have said?

(I keep mixing "what were you" and "what is it you were" in my English translations, but I assume you understand what's what )

[Johanna]

Double posting is only ever an issue if you post the exact same post in a number or forums, not if you ask people to clarify things within the same thread.

The former is spam, the latter is someone trying to learn a language, and we love the latter

We do however prefer it if you edit your former post instead, it makes the thread a bit easier to read.

//Forum Administrator

[Rathael87]

Thankyou Aleco. Another perfect answer. I'm not sure how I managed to slip å into "ånd" there I think I was using the norsk keyboard on my phone. I understood what you meant perfectly, thankyou again

[Aleco]

Always glad to help