When do we use “Mange” and when “Mye?”
For instance, “Potetene er ikke sa store, sa jeg ma ta MANGE.” Compare with “Vi kan fa MYE orret pa denne artida.”
Now, I have only just begun learning Norwegian, so I don’t know the official line on this, but in many languages I’ve noticed there’s a countable and an uncountable word for many. I would suppose that ‘mange’ is the countable version of the word, while ‘mye’ is the uncountable. See: English ‘many’ (countable) and ‘much’ (uncountable); German, ‘viele’ (countable) and ‘viel’ (uncountable); etc. Not all languages insist on this (see: Russian ‘Сколько?’ – how much or how many). These pairs of words could also be thought of as plural and singular, I guess.
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Hi.
As @isharr already mentioned; Norwegian does also have “countable” and “uncountable” word: Mange & Mye.
Mange = Many (Countable)
Mye = Much (Uncountable)
Best regards
Walbern
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I am sorry but I do no quite understand.
What is “countable” and what is “uncountable,” please?
We use a ‘countable’ word for sentences like ‘How many books do you have?’ or ‘How many drinks have you had?’ Books and drinks are discrete things and can be counted with cardinals (we can have one book/drink, or two, or over nine thousand).
We use an ‘uncountable’ word for more homogeneous things, as in ‘Do you have much time?’ We tend to think of time as a block, a singular thing of which we can have more or less; but we cannot have fewer time (thus we cannot count it, per se).
Does that make any sense?
Many — things we can count: pencils, skittles, problems, etc…
Much — thing we cannot count: water, air, covfefe, etc…
Thank you.
COVFEFE 