[Beginner] Riktig Form

[t3hsandy]

Hei! I'm, of course, new to the forum and to the Norwegian language. I attend the University of Arizona and study with a tutor (I'm the only person in the class) who was born and raised in Bergen. One of my more persistent issues in Norwegian is using the proper form of verbs. I always mess it up.

Does anyone have any tips they used to help them learn the proper forms? My tutor says it's something that can be fixed with more practice - does anyone have any resources to practice these forms further?

Thanks! =)

[Lauren]

How do you define "proper" as opposed to "improper" verb forms?

[t3hsandy]

The text I have been using only uses proper forms and not improper. But, pretty much, I'm having an issue using the right verb form. Like with å spise, å være, å se, å se pa - to name a few.

[Lauren]

Well, those are the infinitives, but I still don't understand what an "improper" form would be. Most verbs have only 4 forms, some less (excluding variant forms). For "å spise" they would be:

Infinitive: Jeg liker å spise epler. (I like to eat apples.)
Present: Jeg spiser epler. (I eat/am eating apples.)
Past: Jeg spiste epler. (I ate apples.)
Past participle: Jeg har spist epler. (I have eaten apples.)

All of these, in bokmål at least, are "proper". I guess some forms might be "improper" if they are dialectal and not used in the written standard, but otherwise I have no idea what you are asking.

[t3hsandy]

With the text I use it gives instructions as follows: "Sett inn den riktig formen av verbet:" and then wants me to put in the correct infinitive form of the verbs. I have the different forms written down for many of the verbs I have encountered so far in the text (I use Norsk: Nordmenn og Norge 1 - Beginning Norwegian"), but I still have issue with using the right form. My tutor says I need more practice, so I was wondering if anyone had any resources for me to practice more.

Does that make a little more sense?

[Lauren]

What do you mean by the correct infinitive form? In bokmål there's only one, which is the lemma in dictionaries. Does the book give you multiple forms of a word, then you have to choose the right one? Or what?

Check this out:

http://pavei2004.cappelendamm.no/

It might be useful for exercises. It's only in Norwegian, but it's pretty simple.

Most infinitives end in an "e", some in another vowel. And I forgot another verb form, ending in "s", which is pretty much the passive, IIRC.

Epler kan spises. (Apples can be eaten.)

[t3hsandy]

Much like the forms you presented earlier. They will give me a sentence and, at the end, have the "å" form in parenethesis (i.e.,______ du _______ i Norge før? (å være)). That's from an earlier chapter and I'm pretty good with å være and å ha forms, but other forms get a bit tricky for me.

Thank you for the link.

[Lauren]

If you know the infinitive form of a verb, you can type it in this dictionary:

http://decentius.hit.uib.no/lexin.html? ... anguages=N

and get the 3 main forms. For example, type "spise" in the search box, and look at the entries for the first word after "inflection". The first is present, then past, then the past participle. Some verb entries, like "dra", may have variant forms of the inflections. The variant forms are given as "(el ___)", where "el" means "eller" and then the variant form which is acceptable in bokmål.

Hope this helps!

[t3hsandy]

Thank you very much. =) I will bookmark that for future use!

[Lauren]

No problem!