Eat my monkeydust

Summary

It’s easy for English speakers to get caught out when talking about when things happen in Norwegian, the most apparent example is in English using “We will take a trip in a week” could be mistakenly translated to “vi skal ta en tur i en uke”. What you’ve actually said is “we will take a trip for a week” as i in this sense means “during”. The correct sentence would have been “vi skal ta en tur om en uke”

Note: Google translate often gets this wrong!

Examples:

• om sommeren – during/in the summer (any summer)
• i sommer – this summer (past or future depending on context)
• forriger sommer / i fjor sommer – last summer / summer last year
• i år – this year
• neste år – next year
• hele år – all year
• hvert år – every year
• for fire år siden – four years ago
• i forrige uke – last week
• fem dager seinere – five days later
• to minutter tidligere – two minutes earlier
• ved/i fem-tiden – around five o’clock (-tiden is like -ish when used here)
• om tre uker – in 3 weeks
• i tre uker – for/during 3 weeks
• i dag / i morges / i kveld – today, this morning, this evening
• i fjor – last year
• ikke på tre uker – not for 3 weeks

Some sentences using the expressions noted:

• Skal vi treffes om to timer? – Can we meet in 2 hours?
• Vi var på besøk hos han Daniel i tre timer – We were visiting Daniel for 3 hours
• Vi besøkte Daniel i tre timer – We visited Daniel for 3 hours
• Rambo har ikke blitt sett på fem år – Rambo has not been seen for five years
• Hun kan skrive hele boka på fem måneder – She can write the whole book in five months