"Dere har uvanlige barn."

Translation: You have unusual children.

[jakob1145]

I'm leaving for Norway in 11 days and will try to slip this into conversation at family gatherings

[7bubble7]

I said "abnormal" and it worked, haha!

[SamHelland]

I just wrote ”Y'all have weird kids." I went out on a limb and it was accepted.

[WhipItGouda]

"Y'all got yourself some weird 'uns there, I tell you hwut"

[DaivikThan]

Yall've yourselves some strange lil' young'uns there

[Coverhead]

What a strange thing to say...

[grydolva]

hehe I think that's a nice euphemism for "your kids are spawn from hell"

[KristianFa17]

Veldig uvanlig ;)

[TheAmazingGoat]

Or kjempeuvanlig?

[Candidandelion]

Oh, I say it about my own kids all the time.

[thienlan]

Do norwegians get offended if you tell them that? I would.

[grydolva]

I would not get offended by uvanlige, actually (despite my earlier comment on "spawn from hell"), but if they said unormale I would get insulted.

Uvanlig can mean they are especially gifted and talented, unlike the regular (vanlige) kids. But if they are unlike "normal" kids (unormale = ikke normale)... I find it hard to imagine that as a neutral or kind comment.

[Caden195835]

why is barn not singular?

[Lolgast]

Barn in itself could mean either child or children (it is an irregular noun), but because of how it is used in the sentence, the singular version would require an article. "You have an unusual child" would be "Dere har et uvanlig barn" (Disclaimer: I'm not sure about the inflection of uvanlig here. I feel like it should get a T since barnet is neuter, but it somehow doesn't look right)

[Huy_Ngo]

Is u- like English un-?

[Deliciae]

Yes, it's a negative prefix like un- or in-. Others you may come across are a- and dis-, which should also look familiar.

[Panthera4]

One can say they're...

peculiar

[AnCatDubh]

...Mr. & Mrs. Addams.

[WilburFish1]

Is barn also plural?

[Deliciae]

Yes, the indefinite plural of "et barn" is "barn". This is a pattern that most monosyllabic neuter nouns follow.

[AJB2002]

The number of acceptable scenarios in which to use this is very very low.

[aattilio]

"You have particular children." Would that also be correct?

[grydolva]

It's not on the list. And after consulting my huge Norwegian-English dictionary I don't think it fits either. But I'm really not that particular about it (fnis). (There were plenty ways to use particular! That's why I like my books even more than I like online tools.)

(Here's the current list: uncommon, weird, unusual, atypical, peculiar, abnormal, strange, unordinary, extraordinary, special)

[aattilio]

thanks! Where do you see the list?

[grydolva]

I'm one of the incubators, I help editing the English-Norwegian tree. So I basically have access to it all:)

[AnCatDubh]

I think you mean ‘peculiar’ ;)

[Magosia978827]

I wrote "kids" insted of "children". Is it really incorrect?

[Candidandelion]

No - Duo seems to use children/kids fairly indiscriminately. In another translation I put 'children' and was told it should be 'kids', but the word was still just 'barn'.

In English, 'kids' is a lot more informal than 'children', but there doesn't seem to be any difference in Norwegian. I don't know if there is another word for 'kids' - if there is I haven't come across it yet.

[nyctea_]

Why is "kids" instead of "children" not accepted?