Table of contents

1 Protected page 2 See 3 Useful expressions 4 Norwegian pronunciation 4.1 Vowels 4.2 Consonants 5 Basic sentences 6 Nouns 6.1 Exercises 7 Verbs 1 7.1 Exercises 7.1.1 From Norwegian to English 7.1.2 From English to Norwegian 8 Pronouns 8.1 Exercises

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See

http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Norwegian When it is clear that all materials have been properly incorporated into Wikibooks it will be deleted.

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This course is a course in bokmål. There is another variant of Norwegian which is called nynorsk. Bokmål is the one most widely used.

Useful expressions

• God dag - Good day
• Hallo - Hello
• Hei - Hi
• Ha det - Good bye
• Takk - Thank you
• Unnskyld - Excuse me
• Jeg kan spise glass. Det gjør ikke vondt. - I can eat glass. It doesn't hurt.
• Ja - Yes
• Nei - No
• Jeg vet ikke. - I don't know.

Norwegian pronunciation

Vowels

There are nine vowels in the Norwegian alphabet, a, e, i, o, u, y, æ, ø and å.

The five first vowels are pronounced as in most European languages other than English.

• æ is pronounced as in hat.
• ø is pronounced as in earn.
• å is pronounced as awe.

It is important to distinguish between long and short vowels. A short vowel is often indicated by doubling the consonant after it. For example hat with a long a means hate, while hatt with a short a means hat.

Consonants

b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, s, t and v are pronounced more or less as in English.

• g is pronounced as in guess, almost never as in gene.
• j is pronounced as the y in yes.

c, q, w, x and z are only used in foreign words.

• c is pronounced as s when it comes before e, i, y and æ, and as k in all other cases.

• q is pronounced as k.

• w is pronounced as v (never as English w.)

• x is pronounced as ks.

• z is pronounced as s.

Note that Norwegian does not have the voiced z-sound, so Norwegian s, x and z are never pronounced as in English is, example or zoo.

Basic sentences

Ordinary Norwegian sentences come in the form of Subject-Verb-Object, as in English. For example:

• Jeg spiser en sjokolade. - I eat a chocolate.
• Du spiser en sjokolade. - You eat a chocolate.
• Han ser en hund. - He sees a dog.
• Hun hører en frosk. - She hears a frog.

All these sentences are translated word for word into English.

Nouns

In Norwegian there are three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, and the inflection of the nouns depends on the gender. Every noun is associated with one gender, and the gender must be learned when learning the noun.

In the above examples, the Norwegian word for a was en. en is the masculine indefinite article. The feminine article is ei and the neuter is et. Thus you say:

• en gutt - a boy
• ei jente - a girl
• et hus - a house

In English, when you want to refer to one particular person or item, you use the article the instead of a or an. In Norwegian you do this by inflecting the nouns:

• gutten - the boy
• jenta - the girl
• huset - the house

• Jeg ser en gutt. - I see a boy.
• Jeg ser gutten. - I see the boy.
• Jeg leser ei bok. - I read a book.
• Jeg leser boka. - I read the book.

Note: For feminine nouns it's optional whether you want to use masculine or feminine inflections. So you might say:

• Jeg leser en bok.
• Jeg leser boken.

Here is the complete table for inflections of nouns:

Gender	Singluar		Plural
	Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
Masculine	en gutt	gutten	gutter	guttene
Feminine	ei jente	jenta	jenter	jentene
Neuter	et eple	eplet	epler	eplene

• eple - apple

Note that the t in the definite singular of neuter nouns is silent, so that eple and eplet are pronounced the same way.

Exercises

Change the nouns from the indefinite to the definite in the following sentences:

• Der flyr en ørn. - There flies an eagle.
• Han ser på jenter. - He looks at girls.
• Hun spiser et eple. - She eats an apple.

Verbs 1

All the verbs you have seen by now end in r. This is the present tense, used to describe something that happens now.

The basic form of a verb is the infinitive. In English these are words preceded by to, as to go and to be. The Norwegian translation of to in this case is the one-letter word å. Norwegian infinitives usually end in e, and you get the present tense by adding r.

Meaning	Infinitive	Present tense
to read	å lese	leser
to see	å se	ser
to eat	å spise	spiser
to hear	å høre	hører
to fly	å fly	flyr
to like	å like	liker
to love	å elske	elsker
to have	å ha	har
to be	å være	er

Note that the last verb in the table is irregular.

Exercises

Now you should be able to translate the following sentences. (They can all be translated word for word.

From Norwegian to English

• Ørnen flyr.
• Hun liker epler.
• Hun liker å spise epler.
• Gutten liker jenta.

In the last sentence, the word order is important. The noun before the verb is the subject, and the noun after the verb is the object.

From English to Norwegian

• I have a book.
• I read the book.
• I love to read.'

Pronouns

Subject		Object
Norwegian	English	Norwegian	English
jeg	I	meg	me
du	you (singular)	deg	you
han	he	han/ham	him
hun	she	henne	her
vi	we	oss	us
dere	you (plural)	dere	you
de	they	dem	them

Exercises

Translate:

• Vi liker fisk. (fisk - fish)
• Jeg elsker deg.