58 Comments
Jeg ser på TV = I am watching TV i thought the på was what distinguished 'see' from 'watch'. am i wrong?
You're very much correct, but this is the translation used for the famous quote from Orwell's "1984", so we needed to include it.
326
i am wondering if this something that is actually said in norway and part of norwegian culture, or if it just a word exercise that happens to be from a popular book?
- 326
yep. then i wonder if 1984 was so popular that it in a sense transcended culture to become a sort of (at least western european/north american) part of popular culture?
it surely was - and is. 1984 is one of the key novels of XX century. You will find references even where you don't expect them to be.
yes you should. the politicians of today are using 1984 and brave new world as more 'instruction manuals' than the warnings they were meant to be!
Go ahead :) and top it with "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, if you haven't read it yet. 1984 is scarier and hence more popular but BNW..won the competition ;)
definitely. it can make you scared... be prepared. It's not about the TV show of our contemprary days.
That's an interesting thought, but it turns out that Duolingo users are crowdsourcing the translation of different texts:
Why is it "my" big brother and not "the" big brother, i mean, i don't quite see where it says "meg" or something like that?
If I got your question right, then it's because possessive pronouns are often omitted when talking about relatives.
Thank you! I had an idea it could only be when talking about relatives but now you confirmed it
in this case no, because the sentence doesn't contain the notion of your big brother, just "some" big brother, in this case it may even be more like a name or fixed term.
How about 'My big brother...'? I seem to remember leaving off the possessive when talking about your own family.
You could technically translate it to "My/Our big brother is..." if the setting allowed for it. We would sooner write it out with a possessive in Norwegian in that case though, "Storebroren min ser deg".
While there is no hard rule, I would say that leaving out the possessive pronoun is something that is more widely done when mentioning family members we tend to only have one of by default. Mor, far, morfar, mormor, farmor, farmor.
Tante and onkel are often used without possessives, but with the person's name added: Onkel Ola, Tante Turid. If you only have one uncle or aunt, you may use 'onkel' and 'tante' without both the possessive and their name.
With brothers and sisters we use 'min bror, broren min, min søster, søsteren min' when mentioning them to someone who does not know them, and just their names when they are known and/or present.
However, seeing as the above sentence is a translation of a quote, it makes sense to translate it without the possessive.
in this instance, "big brother" is referring to the government or powers that be, "watching you" being code for spying on your most private moments
Am I the only one who was slightly terrified to find this as a translation?
I'm so young that I didn't know about that. I had to wikipedia it and the book is called "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Now I know. ;D
I have to disagree and state vehemently that everybody should know about the second World War...
This is the second Orwellian reference I've come across. Someone at Duolingo is a fan.
All animals are equal. Later amended to ....but some are more equal than others
