"Hva ser du?"

Translation: What do you see?

[pi_the_number]

what do your elf eyes see?

[JaapVorselen]

They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!

[arnica5ch]

I've seen natives using "ser" as "watching"

Like "Jeg ser Youtube"

Is that possible?

[Deliciae]

To me it comes off as sloppy language at best, and confusing at worst.
It requires a lot of context to make sense, and thus would not work in this sentence.

Settings where it's passable to omit the "på" from "se på":

"Hun ser aldri (på) nyheter."
"She never watches the news."

"Han sovner alltid når han ser (på) TV."
"He always falls a sleep when watching TV."

In both cases it's no longer a description of a single occurrence, but treated more like a phrasal verb describing a habitual action. And the second example still grates me a little. ;)

Bottom line: You're safer to avoid it, especially in writing.

[BeniAlbania]

can we say:what are you watching?also

[Deliciae]

That would be the translation of "Hva ser du på?".

[PandaAnita]

Hahhah great... "du pa" in Polish means butt/ass. I will remember that one

[Talita-Strom]

Hva sier dur? |what do you say?

[Deliciae]

"Hva sier du?", yes.

[Elif838702]

Does "What do you see?" and "What are you seeing?" has different translations?

[deactivated user]

There is only one present tense in Norwegian which can be translated, depending on the context, as Present Continuous (is seeing) or Present Simple (see[s]).

However, some sentences sound silly in Present Continuous. For example, En jente liker en gutt would sound silly if translated as "A girl is liking a boy". The same applies to Jeg ser ei jente which could mean you're dating a girl when translated as "I'm seeing a girl" but it actually doesn't carry this meaning in Norwegian.

[SonoFrancis]

So when translating does "do" automatically puts itself infront of "ser"? Because when I first did it I thought it said "What see you"

[deactivated user]

Note that there isn't an auxiliary verb ("to do") in Norwegian present tense that you have to use to make questions or negate something ("Do you have..."/"You don't have...") but you do need to include it when translating to English, otherwise the sentence won't make sense.

Hva ser du? --> What + see + you? [literal] --> What do you see? [grammatically correct]