#6 Norwegian nouns demystified (an introduction and a little bit extra) [grammatikk]

Norwegian nouns operate within a three-gender system with unique rules for articles and definiteness that differ significantly from English. We explore how nouns transform when expressing "the" through suffixes rather than separate articles.

• Nouns are words that can have "a" or "the" placed before them in English.
• Norwegian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
• The definite article ("the") is added as a suffix to the end of Norwegian nouns.
• Masculine nouns use "en" and add "-en" for definiteness (en kopp → koppen).
• Feminine nouns use "ei" and add "-a" for definiteness (ei bok → boka).
• Neuter nouns use "et" and add "-et" for definiteness (et hus → huset).
• All feminine nouns can alternatively be treated as masculine if preferred.
• Danish influence explains why feminine forms are considered less formal.
• Plural forms typically add "-er" and "-ene" regardless of gender.
• Short neuter nouns don't change form in the indefinite plural.
• Some nouns (particularly family words) have irregular plural forms.
• The demonstrative "den" (that) is different from the definite article "the". 

You can find the transcript of this episode in the description, which might be helpful when following along with the Norwegian examples.

Chapters

• 0:14 Introduction to Norwegian Nouns
• 3:17 Understanding Gender in Norwegian Nouns
• 8:37 Definite Form and Feminine Nouns
• 12:43 Historical Influence on Norwegian Grammar
• 15:18 Plural Forms and Special Cases
• 22:13 Irregular Nouns and Family Words
• 28:02 Demonstrative Forms and Final Tips

Transcript

Silje: 0:14

Hello, hello and welcome to this beautiful episode about nouns. I will start very easy and it might get more and more complicated as you go. You can stop whenever you feel like it. So, depending on your level, you might just want to hear the first part and keep the rest for later. But first of all, let's start with a noun. What is a noun? Or "substantiv as it's called in Norwegian. And, by the way, you can find the transcript of this episode normally in the description of the episode. So it might be good to follow, at least when I start using Norwegian words. So let's dig right into it.

Silje: 1:00

A noun is a word that you can put a or the in front of. That's the easiest explanation. Sometimes people will say that a noun is the equivalent of a thing, which is often true, but not always so. A cat is also a noun, which is not a thing. So creatures as well, and also abstract ideas, activities, can also be nouns, but then you have to be careful, because activities could also be a verb. So, for instance, if I say "a dance, then it's a noun, but if I say I dance or I like to dance, that's a verb. It sounds the same in English, but it's different. In Norwegian you would say en dans, a dance, that's the noun Jag danser I dance. So you see there's a difference. You have a different ending for the verb. So it's easier to distinguish a verb and a noun in Norwegian than in English.

Silje: 2:09

Other examples of nouns are a cup, a house, a thing, a street, a person, a country, an idea, a spider, love - even though you normally don't put "a in front of it, you could theoretically. Or the love maybe that's easier. Respect you don't normally say a respect, but the respect. So for some nouns, normally you don't, you wouldn't put a in front of them, because it's something abstract, it's not something you would count. Okay, you wouldn't. If you're not able to count it, normally you wouldn't put a in front, but it's still a noun. So then you can test if you can put "the in front. Okay, I think you get it now.

Silje: 3:03

Now, what's the difference between English and Norwegian when it comes to nouns and why is it important to talk about? In Norwegian we do not have the article, what we call definite article, the. It doesn't really exist in Norwegian, or it sort of exists, but not really, not for nouns. So when I want to say the something, instead of putting the in front, I will put the in the end of the word, or the equivalent of the in the end of the word. And in Norwegian we don't have.

Silje: 3:41

Only in Norwegian we have three genders, which is weird Because, well, it's logical. When you talk about things or concepts that have gender, like people, a girl, a woman, a man, then it's logical. But then when you talk about things that do not have that, like love and and a cup, it's it's weird, but but it's called grammatical gender, which means that it doesn't necessarily need to be related to an actual gender of the thing you're talking about. And since nouns have gender, it will also affect the shape or the form of that noun. So, for instance, the article A in English, you have A and you have an", depending on whether there's a vowel or not in the beginning of the noun.

Silje: 4:42

In Norwegian you have to know what kind of gender the noun is. So you can't guess it. Normally you can't guess it, you just have to learn it. So, for instance, masculine nouns would use en. So a cup, for instance, which is masculine, is en kopp. A phone is masculine: "En telefon. Yeah, and of course man would be masculine "En man.

Silje: 5:15

Now we also have feminine nouns and they would start with "ei, e-i. So you would say ei jente, a girl, ei bok, a book, ei lampe a lamp. Now, of course I'm giving you easy words there so you can focus on the grammar part and not the vocabulary. And then last one is nöter, which means no gender. For instance, you have yeah, let's start with ett språk, a language. So language is neutral. Ett hus A house, ett glass A glass. They are all neutral. And you will also see the impact of the gender when you want to say the, the, something that you have only one of. Okay, so it's only when you talk about one thing the house, the car, the phone not the cars and the phones, but the car, the phone then you will see the impact of the gender.

Silje: 6:46

But it's not too complicated. For the masculine nouns and the neuter nouns. The only thing you have to do is put the article in the end of the word. So "en telefon is a phone, and how do I say the phone, telefonen? You see, I added en in the end En telefon, a phone, telefonen, the phone. So it's quite straightforward. It's a little bit different for Nooter, because you will add the article but you won't pronounce the t in the end. So you would say ett hus a house husse. You write it with et but you do not pronounce the t, so "et hus a house, husse, the house. Let's take another one Ett glas a glass, glasset" the glass. Okay, now the final one is feminine and I kept that for the end for two reasons. So first reason is because we do not end with the article. But it's something similar If you think about it, the article.

Silje: 8:14

When I say "that's the article, that sounds a little bit like the first letter in the alphabet, doesn't it? It's a little bit like the first letter in the alphabet, doesn't it? A? It's a little bit more open I, like "e"ei lampe, a, lamp, !", and if you think about that, it's similar to A, (a, b, c) when you pronounce it. And also the letter A is also a very feminine letter. It's used very often in the ends of feminine names like Maria and what else do we have? Christina, Theresa, and that might help you remember that when you want to say the, some feminine noun, you put A, the letter A, not the article E-I, , but the letter A.

Silje: 9:11

So I ei lampe" " say , a lamp, "lampa, "a lampa. That's how you pronounce the letter A in Norwegian. A A Same thing you say when you're at the dentist. " Okay, now this noun already finished with an E. I'm not going to add A to E, so I'm taking away the E and putting A instead. So instead of saying " I'll put A: lampA" let's do another one Book. " This doesn't have any vowel in the end, so it's maybe easier to hear: "A book.

Silje: 10:11

How do you say the book? "Boka, boka. And why is book feminine? No idea. Maybe it's a feminine thing to read books? I don't know. I don't think there's a good explanation for it. You just have to learn it.

Silje: 10:25

And if you're a Latin language speaker, then you might get confused sometimes, because very often the words that are masculine will be feminine in Norwegian and vice versa. But a good thing to know is that you don't have to use the feminine version if you don't want to. So all nouns that are feminine can also be inflected or shaped as if they were masculine. So instead ei bok" " saying , if I want, I can also say "en bok, and then, instead of saying "boka for the book, I would rather say boken, and this is a good thing to do for many reasons.

Silje: 11:15

First of all, because Norwegians don't always consistently use the feminine form, in two ways. First way is that all nouns that can be feminine, they might not treat them all like feminine. They might use some of them as feminine and some as masculine. So that's one reason. And the other one even for the words that they treat as feminine, they might not use all the different feminine forms. So they might f or instance, "en bok, en is the masculine article, but then they say "boka, using the feminine ending. So to make it easier for you, you can choose just to use the masculine ending and using that, ending and article, a nd if you do that, you will also make it easier for you. Because whenever you meet a new word and you don't know the gender of that word, you can take a guess at masculine and in most cases it will work. So you have a bigger chance of being right or guessing right.

Silje: 12:37

So now, why is it like that? Why is the feminine form disappearing? You know, we even have a dialect in Norway, bergensk from Bergen, where people do not use the feminine version at all. It doesn't exist, and there are historical reasons for that, many different reasons for that, and one reason that has affected not only bergensk but all of the dialects in Norway is the time when Norway was under Danish power, from the middle of the 1500s to 1814, when Norway gained its independence, and that's why we're celebrating the 17th of May. But during all those years, the written language in Norway was Danish and Danish, modern Danish or the Danish at that time, and the modern Danish doesn't have feminine gender. So the book, the written language that you're learning, was founded on, was based on Danish, so it's like a Norwegianized Danish, probably the main reason why the, a ending for nouns, is considered as something that is more informal, like more used in spoken Norwegian and not as much in written Norwegian.

Silje: 14:22

Even though you use the feminine conjugation or inflection, you might not use it when you write. It's getting more and more normal to use it, but it's still looked a little bit down upon to use in, like scientific texts, for instance, or official documents, they don't use the feminine as much as they would use the masculine.

Silje: 15:00

Okay, we've talked about genders. We've talked about how to say "a and the something when you talk about one so singular. We've talked about singular part. Now it gets easier from now because when you talk about plural or many things, many nouns. You don't have to like many of something, you do not have to think too much about gender anymore. The endings will be, or can be, the same. So we still have endings. We're still going to add something to the noun. We're not going to say "the, never say the Okay.

Silje: 15:46

So let's use the examples that I used before: "n kopp" a cup, en kopp koppen, the cup. Now, if I want to say cups, I add "telefon En telefon", Phones, "telefonen, the phone. Now, how do you say phones? What do I add? Telefoner, same ending, telefoner. Okay. Feminine word "Ei jente, a girl, remember "jenta, the girl, a. Now how do you say girls? "Jenter, er, er, same ending. This is quite straightforward, because it's like in English you put an ending right. In English you put S, in Norwegian you put ER. So you know that if you put S in English, you should just put ER in Norwegian. Let's do another one: "Ei lampe, a lamp, feminine Lampa, the lamp, lampir, air Lamps Right so lampir Kopper, "telefoner, lamps, right so lampet, koppet, telefonet. Okay, you get the logic.

Silje: 17:40

Now. plus

Silje: 17:40

I didn't mention any neuter words, did I? And there's a reason for that. Very often the neuter help you are very short. Most of them are short. And well, I'm not going to say that. Same, stays them are short, but many of the ones we use a lot are short. And "ett you have a short neuter, noun, so "Et glass - a glass to glass" those"Et språk" - a language. when I is t wo it ? means"To one språk"., and when I say one syllable, it means that you can say it with one clap, one breath. So talk, glass, cup, cup isn't neuter, but it's's short. Hus, okay, so you can clap once, that's one syllable. Two syllable words would be, for instance, jentä, that's two. Jentä, lam, pä. Two syllables, okay, so one syllable, a neuter. When you have those two rules together, it's quite easy.

Silje: 19:01

You don't add anything, you just keep it as it is, which means that the context would have to help. You know that it is plural. Okay, it's like sheep, one sheep, two"s sheep, I think Same Says the same, but you get it in the context that you're talking about many. So ett hus, a house To hus, same thing. Two houses"ene two glasses,"enne a language. And what is? Two languages To språk? Same thing, okay.

Silje: 20:06

And now final, final, final inflection, when I want to say the, something that I have many of. So the "ene, the languages, the books, the, the, the fine: glassene" something letters in the end of the word. So the something, something S, the houses, for instance, would be replaced by the ending enne, e-n-e, enne. So if I want to say the phones, remember the word for phone, telefon. The phones, remember the word for phone, telefon. If I want to say phones, it's telefoner, right, er. If I want to say the phones, telefon, enne.

Silje: 21:09

If I want to say the cups, the glasses, now it doesn't matter which gender it is, it's Norwegian to be enne even though glass is neuter, that's . fine You The girls, glass is neuter, that's fine. Glassene. The girls, jentene. The lamps, lampene. What else did we have? Hus, husene.

Silje: 21:42

Okay, these are the basic"t rules that you learn in the beginning. Two different things. If you've studied Norwegian for a kids", maybe you're in the book På vei you started talking about family. This rule can be nice " know about. If you have started the talking family, you might know the word for Ett So you've is a kid, and"barna logically it's neutral, because if you say is.

Silje: 22:20

So that's kind of logical Ett barn, a kid, and normally you would add enne, right, when you say the kids Barn, enne, right" when you say the kids, barnenne, right, and you can. You can say that Barnenne, that's fine." You find it in a dictionary, but it's not very common to do so. You've probably met the version barna A with an A ending, a Barna, just like the A ending, a barna, just like the feminine ending when you say the girl jenta Choose lamp lampa. So you might Like et said to et yourself okay, et barn glass is a feminine word. No, it's not so. This A ending has a different function than the A ending for feminine nouns. Okay, and it's very common for the word barn and for the word bein, bein et bein means a leg or a bone.

Silje: 23:27

You don't necessarily need it right now, but what I want to say is that it's only those two words where normally people will never add enna in the end of a noun. It's only for those two words and in general people will always use enna, no matter the gender. But if you want or not, if you want, but if you sometimes discover a endings for words that are not feminine"bok a neutral word, a" neuter word, neutral, neuter. plural, the "o " Choose whichever you prefer"ø to of saying glassene the from that, husene the houses, and allowed to say språka the languages, husa the houses, and glassa the glasses. You can, but it's not so common to do it BØKER Do it Except for the two words barn et barn, Ø barna the kids, and et bein beina, a leg the legs. Apart from those two words, it's not something that's very O common to do. So those are Ø two, I would say two exceptions that you just have to learn, because nobody says bar-na-na and by-na-na. It's very uncommon to do. You can, but it's weird if you do it. So that's the.

Silje: 25:22

That was one thing I wanted to, that's one thing I wanted to say. And the last thing I wanted to say about nouns is that of course we have indefinite no, sorry, we also have irregular nouns, just like in English, where"faren it can change completely, but most of the time there will just be a inside the dictionary word, for instance hus , hus is not indefinite, irregular, like book, the"er vowel is u. When you talk about plural. For the plural, the? U will change to ö. So the ending, apart that, will be the same, the ending will change it be be will b oother b So b bother other oending, apart that, will be the same, the ending will be the same, but the vowel inside of the main word will change. So I would say, instead of saying BOKER for books, I would say BÖKER, still keep ER ending, but I change O to Ö. And when I say the books, I don't say bokene, I'll say bøkene. So you have one vowel in singular o and then one vowel in plural ö.

Silje: 26:48

And then of course there are some nouns that you just have to learn. They change a lot. Like family words, many of the family members, they change quite a lot. So that's something to focus on. Like en far, a father Faren, that's easy, until now, it's easy. But then plural Fedre, fedrene, it's easy. But then plural fædre, fædrene, that's quite different. And then all nouns finishing with er have some special endings as well, depending on what kind of noun it is. If it describes a person, it will be one ending, and if it doesn't describe a person, it will be one ending, and if it doesn't describe a person, it will be another ending. That's like the main rule that you can learn. I can make a separate episode on that; nouns finishing with ER.

Silje: 27:44

And the last thing I wanted to say to you, because a lot of you are gonna want to put "the in front of the noun and then you're gonna see something that reminds you of the and you're gonna get super confused. So I'm gonna explain that to you right now before you start getting confused. So, for instance, let's take the word, let's take the word " En kop, a cup koppen, the cup masculine. You might see some people write den "den koppen and you'll be like, oh, that's the same as "the cup. No, it's not.

Silje: 28:25

"Den means that it's not a definite article. It's what we call a demonstrative, and the function of "den is to point out something. It's like you're figuratively or physically pointing at something and saying that one, not that one, but that one, that cup. Okay? And notice that I don't say den kopp", I say den koppen. I keep the ending "en. So what I'm actually saying is "that den koppen, the cup, that the cup. It's weird if you translate literally, but that's what you have to say "that the cup, den koppen. So "koppen is the cup, den koppen that cup. Okay, I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions, and I hope you have a good day. Ha en fin dag! Vi høres! :)