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Norwegian grammar A1: beginner

The complete guide from A1 to B1: the rules, examples to listen to, the usual mistakes.

Level A1 covers the grammar of first exchanges in Norwegian Bokmål: saying who one is and where one lives, asking and answering, naming, counting and describing people and things, saying what one can, wants and must do, placing an event in time and space, and telling what will happen and what happened. Most of it rests on two facts: the verb has one form for every person, and in a main clause the finite verb is the second element.

What A1 holds

  • the present and the infinitive: jeg bor, å bo; snakker, leser, går;
  • the main clause: the verb second, questions, ikke and short answers, and the joining words og, men, eller, for, så;
  • the noun with its gender and its four forms: en bil, bilen, biler, bilene;
  • the pronouns, the possessives and the indefinite adjective with its agreement: faren min, et stort hus, store biler;
  • the modal verbs, the future with skal, the imperative and the preteritum: kan, må, skal reise, Kom!, snakket, gikk;
  • place and time: i, på, hos, til; hjem and hjemme; the clock and the date.

What is new for an English speaker

  • the verb second: after a time or place word at the front, the subject comes after the verb, Nå leser Per (“Per is reading now”);
  • ikke after the finite verb, with no auxiliary like “do”: Jeg forstår ikke (“I don’t understand”);
  • three genders, en, ei and et, and the definite article as an ending on the noun: huset (“the house”);
  • one verb form for every person and no progressive: Hun leser is “she reads” and “she is reading”;
  • the double forms Bokmål accepts: boka or boken, snakket or snakka, sto or stod.

The usual difficulties

  • the gender of each noun, which its form seldom shows, and its plural;
  • the agreement of the adjective: en ny bil, et nytt hus, nye biler;
  • the choice between words English does not distinguish: hjemme and hjem, her and hit, i and på, skal and vil.

  1. The present and the main clause

    The Norwegian present has one form for every person: jeg snakker, hun snakker, de snakker.

  2. Nouns

    A Norwegian noun is masculine, feminine or neuter: an en-word, an ei-word or an et-word, after its indefinite article.

  3. Pronouns and pointing words

    Norwegian pronouns have one form for the subject and another for the object, and the words for “it”, “this”, “that” and “which” agree with the gender and the number of the noun they stand for or stand before.

  4. The modal verbs and the infinitive

    A Norwegian sentence often holds two verbs: a finite verb, then an infinitive.

  5. Adjectives

    A Norwegian adjective agrees with its noun in gender and number: the basic form for an en-word or an ei-word, -t for an et-word and -e for the plural, before the noun and after være alike.

  6. Possession, numbers and time

    The Norwegian possessive usually follows the noun, which then has its definite form: faren min.

  7. Place

    Place is shown in Norwegian by small prepositions (i, på, hos, til, fra), by pairs of adverbs for rest and movement (hjemme and hjem, her and hit), and by the verbs ligger, står, sitter and henger, which say how a thing is placed.

  8. The past

    The preteritum is the Norwegian simple past: it tells what happened at a time that is over.

  9. The future

    Norwegian has no future tense of its own.

  10. The imperative

    The imperative is the form of the verb used for orders, instructions, requests and invitations.

Contents · Norwegian grammar