How to say "ish" (similar to) in Norwegian

Short story short: this blogpost wanted to be written…

As I walked through Slottsparken (“the castle park” in Oslo) I overheard these two middle-aged men sitting on a bench chatting. The piece I overheard was really short, but still so interesting on many levels! Here it goes:

“Rundstykkeaktig, liksom.”

“Ja, litt loffete.”

First of all because they, in only 5 words, showed three ways of expressing “ish” or “sort of”.

Second because they used words that you will not find in the dictionary, but are still words that any Norwegian would understand and are considered real words.

Adding -ete og -aktig to a noun is the equivalent of the ending “ish” in English. Norwegians love using these endings, maybe especially “-ete”, but we don’t use it exactly the same way English speakers would use “ish”. English speakers would for instance say “let’s meet at ten-ish”, in Norwegian you would have to say for instance “rundt ti” (around ten). In Norwegian “-ete” (vannete) can only be added to nouns and “-aktig” can be added to both nouns and adjectives (grønnaktig, vannaktig).

We do have adjectives finishing with “-ete” that do not mean “-ish”. It could for example be based on a verb (vimsete - whimsical, from the verb “å vimse”; sutrete - grumpy, from the verb “å sutre”). These adjectives can not be made up, it would not make sense to add “ete” to a verb to make a new adjective. This was just to give an example to show that “-ete” at the end of adjectives does not always mean “ish”.

Now let’s go back to our two men on the bench. What were they discussing? “Rundstykke” literally means “round piece” and is a small piece of bread. And “loff” (coming from the English word “loaf”) is bread made from white, refined wheat flour. Probably they were discussing how their lunch tasted like, which also shows what Norwegians typically eat for lunch in Norway: bread! In Norway, unless you’re lucky enough to have a cantina at work, people will mostly have a cold lunch, generally consisting of bread and “pålegg” (everything you can put on you bread: jam, cheese, butter …).

And then the final word: “liksom”, meaning “sort of” (or literally “alike as”. We use this a lot when we hesitate and are not sure how to describe things. Just like “sort of” in English.

Thanks to the two men on the bench and their very random conversation! You made it easy to find out what to write about in today’s blogpost :)

Have a good day :)

Silje