translation request

[electricdruid]

I have a question regarding Norwegian forms of address, and I'm having a tough time googling it.

Scenario 1: I am walking down the street and the person in front of me drops something. I pick it up, and to catch their attention, I call out "Sir!" or "Miss!" or "Ma'am" depending on what the stranger looks like.

Scenario 2: My friend is at a

Comments

[dorsetgirl]

I haven't read the other comments yet, because I wanted to give my first impressions.

the scenarios above ... are perfectly normal in English

I can't help with the Norwegian, but I also can't agree with this assertion. Both of your scenarios seem unnaturally formal to me!

For scenario 1, I would be calling out "Excuse me! Hallo? You dropped something!"

For scenario 2 (supposing I could get my words out at all through the layers of OMG-it's-really-Mike-right-here-OMG) I would be saying "Mike! I'm so thrilled to meet you, loved the show ..." etc. I would consider anyone who actually said "You, sir, are a genius" to be either taking the piss or setting themselves up as superior to the person they were praising. A more natural way of saying it imo would be "You're brilliant, an absolute genius!"

But I would emphasise that I would never call a musician a genius, because that would be to presume I am qualified to judge whether they are a genius or just very good, and I am not so qualified.

[electricdruid]

Personally, I would feel very uncomfortable shouting "Excuse me! Hallo? You dropped something!" at a stranger. That feels rather rude to me (no reflection meant on you, of course). "Excuse me, miss!" seems "perfectly normal" to me because every stranger who has ever tried to catch my attention has used this type of language.

[dorsetgirl]

Are you in the US? I have noticed that Americans use "sir/ma'am/miss" an awful lot more than we do; it sounds really strange to me! As far as I know my usage is pretty ordinary in this country; I've had very similar said to me when I've dropped something myself. (And I haven't been called "miss" since I was an eighteen-year-old shop assistant, many years ago.)

I'm intrigued now as to how you would decide whether to call out "Miss" or "Ma'am" to a woman? Doesn't it all take too long, by the time you've worked out whether you can see their ring finger, or whether they're old enough to be married, or at what age they might find it acceptable to be called "Ma'am" even if they're not? (If someone calls me "ma'am" I always want to say "For God's sake, do you really think I look like the Queen?" I loathe being addressed as ma'am or madam!)

[amenaspointyhat]

We distinguish by age, not actual marital status. An older woman would be ma'am and a younger would be miss.
I am in the US and we do say sir, ma'am, miss regularly. And on scenario two, that is a fairly common way to say that without sounding like you're taking the piss. I hesitate to say it's an idiom but it is common enough that it's intended meaning isn't missed.

[electricdruid]

Thank you! I have spent all day feeling like I live in crazy town XD

[tasyfa]

For what it's worth, I'm from the Toronto area and my usage mirrors yours. I'd call out, "Excuse me, Miss/Sir, you dropped your [item]." And the colloquialism of the, "You, sir," reads fine to me.

I also only use Ma'am for significantly older women - my time in retail taught me that calling a middle-aged woman Miss goes over reasonably well but calling a twentysomething woman Ma'am does not, so much!

not crazy

[amenaspointyhat]

HAHAHA

RE: not crazy

[iddewes]

Yeah it's a bit different from Downton Abbey. ;) Try going to London, go on the London Underground and try standing on the left side of an escalator going down. You'll soon find out how rude we Brits can get then, ha ha.

[electricdruid]

Yep, I'm from the US, and yes, we take a guess by age. Unless someone looks old enough to be a grandmother, I'll probably go with Miss, precisely because I'd prefer to avoid making them feel old.

[resident_pink]

It'll take you a while to get used to Scandinavia then, I'm afraid. ;) I'm from Sweden, but in my experience the Norwegians are like us: we simply don't use that sort of formal address, unless possibly if we're meeting with an ambassador or foreign head of state country where the foreign country's customs suggest formal address is necessary.

In the former scenario, something like "Excuse me, hello, you dropped something" is the natural choice for me. Can't spell it properly in Norwegian, sorry. In Sweden we'd say "Hallå/ursäkta, du tappade något". If they don't react, I guess you could conceivably hear someone try to pinpoint them by saying something "hey, you, lady in the red coat" but it tends to sound incredibly awkward and we don't have formal words like Ma'm or Miss, we use "lady", "girl" or "guy" and it's just not the same.

For scenario #2, I'd guess you could possibly express this sort of "reverent" sir as something like, "min gode man" (= my good man). As in "Ni, min gode man ...", although many people today might actually

[electricdruid]

Thanks, this was very helpful! :)

[resident_pink]

*removes an extra "country" from somewhere in there* -- late night sloppy editing. =/

[biascut]

Ha, my example for how I'd get a stranger's attention is almost identical!