#8 Å legge, å sette and å putte: Things, their position and the art of placing them correctly. [vokabular]

While English speakers casually "put" things anywhere, Norwegians must choose between three specific verbs—å legge, å sette, and å putte—depending on an object's final position. This episode breaks down this unique linguistic feature with clear examples and memorable rules that will transform your understanding of Norwegian.

You'll discover the clever "creature with a head" technique that helps determine whether an object is "standing" or "lying"—even when it's not obvious. Find out why a plate is considered "standing" even when it appears flat on a table, and why objects can never "sit", only stand or be lying down.

This quirky feature of Norwegian offers more than just grammar knowledge—it provides a window into how language shapes perception. 

Chapters

• 0:13 Norwegians Care About Object Positioning
• 0:59 Lying vs Standing Objects
• 3:00 The Putte Verb Explained
• 5:45 Transitive vs Intransitive Verbs
• 8:13 Practice Sentences
• 11:05 Why Objects Stand, Not Sit

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

Hello, did you know that Norwegians are very interested in how things are placed? When you put something on the table or in your shelf or in the fridge, the positioning of that thing is very, very important. Or it could be. In Norwegian, we have three verbs that all mean put or place in English, and which one you use has to do with the object that you're talking about and which position you put it in. So let's dive right into it.

Speaker 1: 1:01

legge" is used when the object that you're putting somewhere is lying, and what does that actually mean? Let's use book as an example. When it is flat, it's lying, and when it's up, like vertical, it's standing. Basically, and in general, that is the rule that will help you the most, but not always. So another rule that can help you for all cases when you should determine whether to use å lägga for lying objects or sätta for standing objects, you can think about the object as a creature, and a creature would have a head and it would have feet. So take your object, for instance a book, and imagine where would the head of this thing be when you read it. What has to be up right? What is like the upper part of it, that is the head. Take a cup, for instance. The head of a cup would be the opening. That's what you need to have up so that the content doesn't pour out. And this is important because there are some objects that when they are flat or horizontal, they still, even though they look like they're lying, we actually look at them as if they were standing. For instance, a plate Plate is flat, but what side do you need to have up for it to be functional? The flat part, the part where you put the food right. So that's the head of the plate. So if you say that, if you use lägge for that noun, then it means that it's actually vertical, which is super weird. So in that case you would have to say sätta. So, for instance, I would say jag sätter Sätter koppen på bordet. I put the cup on the table, sätter Sätter, because the cup is standing, the head is up. Jeg legger boka på bordet. I put the book on the table. Legger, because the book is lying. The result when I put there is that the table Leggir because the book is lying. The result when I put there is that it will be lying. And if you put something in a bag or another container, let's say a plastic bag, a backpack, you would use LEGGER, no matter if the thing is standing afterwards or not. So jeg legger boka I sekken, jeg legger maten I sekken.

Speaker 1: 4:26

And some things don't really have any verb, any preferred verb, because they don't really have any head, like a ball, for instance, it's completely round, there's no natural up and down. So for those words you can choose Jeg legger ballen på gulvet, jeg sätter ballen på gulvet. "Jeg setter ballen på gulvet, I put the ball on the floor. It doesn't matter which one you use.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Another verb that you can use sometimes is å putte, which is very similar to put in English, but we only use it for when you put something inside of something, only that. So I would say "Jeg putter melka I kjøleskapet, I put the milk in the fridge. Jeg putter boka I sekken I put the book in the bag or in the backpack. Okay, now, when you use the words putte, legge, sette, all of those three, you always need to have something. You always need to have something afterwards.

Speaker 1: 5:48

You can't just say jeg putter and then you stop right, or so if you want to say, because we also use these verbs, not putte, but we also use those for when you put yourself somewhere. So if you go from standing to sitting, for instance, you would say "Jeg settet mig, which would translate to something like I sit myself or I put myself in a sitting position, whereas "would mean I lay myself down, okay. And we also use to say I go to bed. So it can mean both Either I go to bed or I lay down, okay, but you have to say mig afterwards. So if it's somebody else, you would say du lägger dig or du sätter dig you lay down or you sit down. So this is something we call transitive verbs, which mean you need to put an object after them, whether it's my or Boka, the book or something else. And it's important to know this, because we have other verbs that are quite similar to these two, but they are intransitive, they're not transitive, so they don't have an object afterwards, and the consequence of that is that there's no change. They're not talking about any change, any change of position or any movement. They're just talking about the state. So there's no change of state. They're already lying or they're already sitting or already standing. That I will talk more about in the next episode. Okay, so I'm going to give you three sentences and I want you to tell me how I can translate them into Norwegian, and I'm going to give you some time to think.

Speaker 1: 8:13

I put the eggs in the fridge. So you can either say "Jeg setter eggene I kjøleskapet, because the eggs are standing right If you imagine the way they're lying in their carton, the head is up or I can say jeg putter eggene I kjøleskapet. Now if they weren't in a carton and I was just putting them right on the shelves in the fridge, I could also say jeg legger eggene I kjøleskapet and I was just putting them right on the shelves in the fridge. I could also say Because then they would be lying. That's what they naturally would do, and that's a little bit funny because we also say" we ägg the hen lays eggs. So legger egg can actually also mean that.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Okay, next one I put the book in the bookshelf. Here also, you have two options. It depends how you put them there. Are they horizontal or lying flat, or are they vertical or down? I would say "eg legger boka I hylla or I bokhylla. Jeg setter boka I bokhylla. Setter, putting it up, making it stand. Okay, last one, actually two more.

Speaker 1: 10:25

I'll do two and I lay down, and I will end this episode with a little funny or I think it's super funny " , becausejeg setter meg" means I sit down. Right, I sit, but when I use it for an object, when I'm placing an object, "jeg setter koppen på bordet. The cup is not sitting, the cup is standing. That's what we would say Koppen står. That would be the result "Koppen står på bordet, the cup is standing on the table. Why is that? Why don't we say that the cup is sitting? Well, if you think about it, things don't have butts. They can't sit. It's not possible. So they have to stand. Unless it was a doll, maybe, then you could probably make it sit. But yeah, most things can't sit, so that's the reason why. So the result of me sitting down is that I'm sitting, jag sätter mig. Result jag sitter. We're going to talk more about this in the next episode. But jag sätter koppen på bordet. Result koppen står, the cup is standing. So more about this in the next episode. Tack för idag. Vi snakkes, thank you.