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Learn Hardcore Norwegian: Svarene er lette å skille. - The answers are easy to distinguish.

Hardcore Norwegian
/Taking an overnight ferry
/Svarene er lette å skille.

Svarene er lette å skille.

Svarene er lette å skille.

The answers are easy to distinguish.

Breakdown of Svarene er lette å skille.

Questions & Answers about Svarene er lette å skille.

What form is svarene?

Svarene is the definite plural form of svar, which means answer.

et svar = an answer
svaret = the answer
svar = answers
svarene = the answers

So the sentence is talking about the answers, not just answers in general.

Why is it lette and not lett?

Because lette has to agree with svarene, which is plural.

The adjective lett changes form depending on the noun:

lett for singular neuter or as a general predicate in some cases
lette for plural

Here, svarene is plural, so Norwegian uses lette:

Svaret er lett å skille. = The answer is easy to distinguish.
Svarene er lette å skille. = The answers are easy to distinguish.

Does lette mean light or easy here?

Here it means easy.

The adjective lett can mean both:

light in weight
easy in difficulty

In this sentence, the meaning is clearly easy, because å skille is an action, so lette å skille means easy to distinguish / easy to tell apart.

skille

to distinguish; separate

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What does å skille mean here?

Here å skille means to distinguish, to tell apart, or sometimes to separate, depending on context.

In this sentence, the natural meaning is to distinguish or to tell apart.

So Svarene er lette å skille means that the answers are easy to recognize as different from one another, or easy to tell apart.

Why is there no word like apart or from each other in the sentence?

Norwegian often leaves that idea understood when the context is clear.

So Svarene er lette å skille can naturally mean The answers are easy to tell apart, even though Norwegian does not explicitly say from each other.

If you want to make it more explicit, you can say:

Svarene er lette å skille fra hverandre.

That more clearly means The answers are easy to tell apart from each other.

Why is it å skille and not å skilles?

Norwegian often uses an active infinitive after adjectives like lett and vanskelig, even when English would translate it with a more passive idea.

So:

Svarene er lette å skille
literally looks like The answers are easy to distinguish

but the real sense is:

The answers are easy to distinguish
The answers are easy to tell apart

You can also make the passive meaning more explicit in another structure:

Svarene kan lett skilles.
= The answers can easily be distinguished.

Both are natural, but lette å skille is a very common pattern.

Is this a common Norwegian sentence pattern?

Yes. The pattern [noun] + er + lett/lette + å + infinitive is very common.

Examples:

Boken er lett å lese. = The book is easy to read.
Spørsmålene er lette å forstå. = The questions are easy to understand.
Svarene er lette å skille. = The answers are easy to distinguish.

This is a very useful pattern to learn, because it works much like English easy to + verb.

Could I say enkle instead of lette?

Yes, sometimes, but lette sounds more natural in this kind of sentence.

lette å skille = easy to distinguish
enkle å skille = simple to distinguish

Both can work, but lett/lette å + infinitive is the standard, everyday way to say that something is easy to do.

So Svarene er lette å skille is the more idiomatic choice.

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