Norwegian Classroom:Nouns-Genders and Plurals

Nouns

Now we’ll move into something which is a little more complicated, and a little more different from English. You probably know what nouns are, and now we’re going to see how they act in Norwegian. As you might have noticed already, many words aren’t too different from English. Some examples of a few Norwegian nouns:

Hus

Tre

Ball

Klokke

This is how you conjugate a noun in English:

Singular Indefinite	Singular Definite	Plural Indefinite	Plural Definite
a house	the house	houses	the houses

In English the -s ending means plural, and the is the definite article. The only thing that may cause problems for foreigners is the use of a / an, and some irregular plural forms.

The problematic thing in Norwegian is that it has, like most other Indo-European languages, several genders. And it doesn’t only have two, but three genders. They are called masculine, feminine and neuter.

It’s pretty impossible to know which gender a noun is, so in this tutorial we’ll always tell you the gender of the new nouns, by adding (m), (f) or (n) after the words. You’ll find this in most dictionaries as well.

Nouns in Norwegian (Bokmål) have two genders, masculine and neuter, which adjectives must agree with when modifying nouns. Technically there is a third gender, feminine (which Nynorsk retains), but since feminine nouns can be written as masculine nouns, I’m including feminine nouns in the masculine category. There are two indefinite articles that correspond with these genders: en for masculine nouns and et for neuter nouns. In the vocabulary lists, a noun followed by (n) means that it is a neuter noun and it takes the indefinite article et. The majority of nouns in Norwegian are masculine, so they take the indefinite article en. The only case of nouns that is used in Norwegian is the genitive (showing possession), and it is easily formed by adding an -s to the noun. This is comparable to adding -‘s in English to show possession. However, if the noun already ends in -s, then you add nothing (unlike English where we add -‘ or -‘s). Olavs hus = Olav’s house Masculine nouns generally add -er or -r to the indefinite singular noun to form the indefinite plural, and -ene or -ne to form the definite plural. The names of jobs ending in -er only add -e and -ne in these cases. Neuter nouns that are more than one syllable form plural nouns the same way as masculine nouns. Neuter nouns that are only one syllable, however, add nothing to form the indefinite plural and either -ene or -a to form the definite plural.

Singular	Indefinite Plural		Definite Plural
en fisk	fisker	some fish	fiskene	the fishes
en hage	hager	some gardens	hagene	the gardens
en baker	bakere	some bakers	bakerne	the bakers
et vindu	vinduer	some windows	vinduene	the windows
et hus	hus	some houses	husene	the houses
et barn	barn	some children	barna	the children

Irregular plural nouns in Norwegian

Singular	Irregular Indefinite Plural		Singular = Indefinite Plural
and	ender	duck(s)	angrep (n)	attack(s)
bok	bøker	book(s)	besøk (n)	visit(s)
bonde	bønder	peasant(s)	eventyr (n)	tale(s), story(ies)
fot	føtter	foot(feet)	feil	error(s), mistake(s)
hånd	hender	hand(s)	forhold	circumstance(s)
håndkle	håndklær	hand towel(s)	høve (n)	opportunity(ies)
kne (n)	knær	knee(s)	kreps	crawfish(es)
kraft	krefter	strength	mus	mouse(s)
ku	kyr	cow(s)	mygg	mosquito(es)
natt	netter	night(s)	sild	herring(s)
mann	menn	man(men)	sko	shoe(s)
rand	render	edge(s)	spiker	nail(s)
rot	røtter	root(s)	ting	thing(s)
sted (n)	steder	place(s)	våpen	weapon(s)
stang	stenger	bar(s)
strand	strender	beach(es)
tang	tenger	pincher(s)
tann	tenner	tooth(teeth)
tre	trær	tree(s)
tå	tær	toe(s)
øye	øyne	eye(s)

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