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- Topic: Norwegian (Bokmål) >
- "Jeg har på meg lette klær."
33 Comments
This sentence refers to lightweight clothes.
Light coloured clothes would be either "lyse klær" or "lysfargede klær".
Glad to see so many people thought it was "my clothes" too. It's always helpful at the start of a lesson to be reminded that we should calm down the English speaker in our brains and remember that just because a word sounds like "my", this is a different language where "my" is "meg" and "meg" is "me"!
A little question: Klær is plural so "lette" is indefinate plural form for adjective, fine. But what is the indefinate form for masculine and neutral nouns? Lette would mean lett is for masculine?
"Lette" is used for all plurals. It's also used for definite singulars of all genders when attributively placed, i.e. placed in front of the noun.
"Lett" is used for indefinite singulars of all genders, and when predicatively placed (after the noun) modifying definite singulars:
"En lett bil" (indefinite singular)
"Bilen er lett" (definite singular; predicative placement)
"Den lette bilen" (definite singular; attributive placement)
"Lette biler" (indefinite plural)
"Bilene er lette" (definite plural; predicative placement)
"De lette bilene" (definite plural; attributive placement)
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"Lett" can mean "easy", but "I am wearing easy clothes" does not make sense as a sentence in either language. If you wanted to say you were wearing simple clothes, I think that would be "Jeg har på meg enkle klær"
It is mistranslated because "har på meg" is a phrase that translates as "am wearing," not the literal "have on me." Also there is not a pronoun for "my" in the sentence. Don't feel bad. I did the same thing.
"My light clothes" is not acceptable? Why "me"? Is it because you do not want to indicate possession?
"Å ha på seg" is a reflexive verb in Norwegian, translating literally to "to have on oneself". So "meg" relates to the verb, not to the noun "klær".
The reflexive pronoun agrees with the subject, so you get "jeg har på meg", but "du har på deg", "vi har på oss", and so on.
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i am wondering about 'i am wearing my light clothing' ? clothing is a generic noun for 'clothes'...
Other comments indicate that the purpose of "meg" in this sentence is to make the verb reflect that it is first person singular. But I have not seen that practice with any other verbs. My aim with this comment is to understand why this sentence needs "meg" to perform this function, whether other verbs exhibit similar behaviors, and how to know which (if any) do and how to use them properly. A thousand thanks in advance!
"Du har på deg lette klær" That's the Norwegian version of a phrasel verb I think. I'm still a beginner. That means "to be wearing"
The adjective has -e ending, because it is implied that the noun has a quality of definiteness, doesn't it? Cause it is not plural (in the Norwegian version). Otherwise it should remain "lett"
I believe this would be more of an indication that you regularly/habitually wear light clothing, whereas 'jeg har på meg lette klær' means that you are wearing light clothing in the moment/day that you are saying it.
Feel free to correct if I am incorrect!
