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Nouns (substantiv) are inflected after what gender they are. Almost all Norwegian dialects have three genders, feminine (hunnkjønn), masculine (hannkjønn) and neuter (intetkjønn). Standard Bokmål (but not "Radical Bokmål" which lies closer to Nynorsk) however, has only two genders, common gender (felleskjønn) and neuter. This means that all feminine nouns in Bokmål also can be inflicted as a masculine noun. That means that the Norwegian word for a girl can be inflicted the same way as the word for a boy (though I have never heard anyone use masculin inflection on that word, neither in writing or when speaking). In spoken Østnorsk, it is common to use three genders or just mix up the inflection patterns (as I do a lot) when speaking, so it is best in my opinion to learn all three. The basic sentence order in Norwegian is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in "jeg spiser epler" (I'm eating apples), but as you probably know, there are many cases where this does not apply. One major difference between English and Norwegian, is that in Norwegian, verbs have the same form in the present tense regardless of the person doing the verb. For example; in English, the verb "to be" is inflected in the present tense: I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are and so on. In Norwegian however, the verb does not change from person to person. The verb “å være” (to be) becomes “er” in present tense, and that goes for ALL persons: “jeg er, du er, han/hun er, vi er, dere er, de er”. The same is the case when inflecting verbs in other tenses; the verb does not change from person to person.
Another important aspect is the use of compound words. Compound words are long words that are built up by two or more smaller words. In Norwegian, it is the last part of the word, the "tail", which decides what gender the word belongs to. There are a lot of compound words, and they are always written together in one word. This can cause words to become very long; one example is the word “menneskerettighetsorganisasjon”, which means “human rights organisation”. It is built up by the words “menneske” (human), “rettighet” (right) and “organisasjon” (organisation). This word is also an example that a compound word can be formed by two or more smaller compound words, since “menneskerettighet” is a compound word itself (“menneske” and “rettighet”).
For learning
Norwegian | Category
Uncategorized | Level
Unspecified |
Second language
English | Created
May 14, 2008 16:40 | Views
890 |
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