In last night's class, our Norwegian instructor gave us a handy vocabulary sheet. It's entitled "Familiemedlemmer paa norsk" which translates to "family members in Norwegian". So now I know the words for mother, father, grandparent, great grandparent, etc. I was interested to discover that Norwegians use the word 'tipp' where we use the word 'great' to add a generation to a grandparent. However, Norwegians do not use this generation-adder for great grandparents, only for great great grandparents and beyond. The term for great grandparent/father/mother is olde-foeldre/far/mor. The term for great great grandfather is tipp oldefar. For great great great grandfather it's tipp tipp oldefar. And so on.
As a learning exercise, we were asked to generate a family tree and add a description of the relationship of each individual to ourselves. Since I already have a fairly extensive family tree developed, the challenge was to limit this tree to something manageable. I chose to reduce it to my known Norwegian line plus a few generations of the remainder of my family. Since I've learned only a few verbs and am not sure of the rules for conjugation in Norwegian, my descriptions below are limited, but here's a stab at describing some of my family.
min besteforeldre:
Henry Starkey -- min farfar
Nellie Schulz Starkey -- min farmor
William Kalmbach -- min morfar
Jessie Montgomery Kalmbach -- min mormor
min oldeforeldre:
Sever S. Starkey -- min oldefar
Justina Peterson Starkey -- min oldemor
William Schulz -- min oldefar
Wilhelmina Bettin Schulz -- min oldemor
min tipp oldeforeldre:
Sevat K. Starkey -- min tipp oldefar
Carrie Syverson Starkey -- min tipp oldemor
Hans Peterson -- min tipp oldefar
Kari Peterson -- min tipp oldemor
min tipp tipp oldeforeldre:
Knud Endreson -- min tipp tipp oldefar
Kirste Halvorsdatter -- min tipp tipp oldemor
