Norwegian for Beginners - krótki kurs.doc

Norwegian for Beginners

Introduction

Welcome to the Norwegian Course for Beginners. In five lessons we'll try to teach you the basics of the Norwegian language.

Norwegian is spoken by over 4 million people in Norway. It is a Germanic language, and it is quite close to Swedish and Danish.

This course will not cover Norwegian pronunciation. We plan to add a Norwegian pronunciation tutorial and also a complete course in the future, we have not done so yet due to the lack of native speakers at UniLang which could record us sound files for these two resources. If you are a native Norwegian speaker or you know any who could help us, send a message to webmaster@unilang.org .

Lesson 1: To Be

The verb to be in Norwegian is easy, just like any other verb in Norwegian: it has only one single form for all persons, either plural or singular! Whether it is I, you or they who is performing an action, the verb form will always be the same for that verbal tense, and this is valid for any verb, at any tense! A great incentive for learning Norwegian...

As for the verb "to be", its name in Norwegian is å være, and its present tense form is er (å is the infinitive marker for the Norwegian verb, just like the English to is. It doesn't work as a preposition like the English to, though). When we refer to the verb itself, without the å/to, we call it bare infinitive. Now let's start by teaching you how to introduce yourself:

That is your very first Norwegian sentence, where you introduce yourself as Morten. That's a person; of course you should replace it with your own name.

Although the sentence consists of only three words, we are going to carefully examine each word. The first word jeg is the equivalent of the English word I, also referred to as the personal pronoun of the first person singular. The second word er is a verb. It's the present form of the verb å være, which is the equivalent of to be, and as we told above it can be used for all persons.

Now we've seen how to introduce yourself using jeg er, but we can also introduce other people. Take a look at the following examples:

That's a lot of new words! But it's all very easy. Now you've seen all personal pronouns in Norwegian, you know how to refer to people. Besides, you've also learned your first Norwegian verb, the irregular verb å være, in English to be. There is another small word that appeared in this lesson: og, which means and.

Det is usually employed for things, meaning it. It can also be used for this, and there are other pronouns with similar usage. You can use it in contexts like Someone has come in. Who is it? It's Morten.

Vocabulary

In each lesson, we'll ask you to learn a number of new words. This time, we'll give you a couple of very easy words. Learn them in both directions, English-Norwegian and Norwegian-English.

Exercises
Each lesson will come with some exercises, so you can practice the grammar and vocabulary of the lesson.

Exercise A: Translate to English:
1) Hun er Hilde.
2) Det er far.
3) De er Per og Jan.
4) Hun er mor.
5) Du er bestemor.
6) Du er bestefar.
7) Vi er Marit og Bjørn.

Exercise B: Translate to Norwegian:
1) We are Anne and Ole.
2) You are father.
3) I am mother.
4) She is grandmother.
5) They are Lars and Kristin.
6) You are Camilla and Anders.
7) You are grandfather.

Solutions
After you've done the exercises, you can check whether your answer is correct using the following sample solutions:

Solution to Exercise A:
1) She is Hilde.
2) It is father.
3) They are Per and Jan.
4) She is mother.
5) You are grandmother.
6) You are grandfather.
7) We are Marit and Bjørn.

Solution to Exercise B:
1) Vi er Anne og Ole.
2) Du er far.
3) Jeg er mor.
4) Hun er bestemor.
5) De er Lars og Kristin.
6) Dere er Camilla og Anders.
7) Du er bestefar.

Lesson 2: Articles and Gender

Apparently you've successfully finished lesson one, so now we can continue with the second lesson. In this lesson you'll learn how to describe certain objects.

GENDER

In Norwegian, every noun belongs to one of three categories: feminine, masculine or neuter. The noun mor (mother) is feminine, far (father) is masculine, barn (child) is neuter.

Now comes the difficult part. Every noun has a gender, and this can seem quite arbitrary. A Norwegian bottle is feminine, an ambulance is masculine and a human being is neuter. There is no logic behind, you must learn the gender with every new noun.

FEMININE GENDER x COMMON GENDER

As you can see, the genders are three, masculine, feminine and neuter. The gender is determined by the article which follows (or precedes) the noun. As for a practical usage, though, the masculine and feminine genders are grouped into a common gender, thus sharing the same articles. This is valid for the written language, but some dialects keep making the three genders's distinction quite clear. Most feminine nouns accept either the masculine or the feminine article, and we recommend you to use the masculine one. But there are some feminine nouns which can't be grouped into the common gender and thus will always use the feminine article, and these you will have to memorize. Don't worry, they are not so many. And you just have to use the same articles and pronouns for all other masculine and feminine nouns.

ARTICLE

In the first lesson you learned how to say "He is father" but that sounds a little bit tarzan-like, wouldn't it sound better if you could say "He is a father" or "He is the father" ? That's what you'll learn now. Take a look at these Norwegian sentences:

Have you guessed what are the indefinite articles in the sentences above? If you said en for the masculine, ei for the feminine and et for the neuter you are right. Remember that the feminine nouns may be grouped into the common gender, so the indefinite article for the feminine nouns is said to be en/ei.

Now with the definite articles. Take a look at the sentences below:

You didn't see any word between the verb er and the noun in the Norwegian sentences, but all the English translations come with the, which is the definite article in English. How come is it possible?

To answer this, you will have to look at the nouns. Notice that the same nouns in the first three sentences, have a different form in the last three. They have got endings. And these endings are the definite articles! So, in Norwegian, the definite article does not come before the noun. The definite article in Norwegian is attached to the end of the noun. Then we say that the noun is in the definite form. If the noun ends in an unstressed e, this e is dropped before attaching the article, as it happened with the word jente, which became jenta.

Now the endings. They are: en for the masculine, en/a for the feminine and et for the neuter nouns. The same as the indefinite articles except for the feminine nouns, which add the ending a and not ei, as would be expected. The final t in definite neuter nouns is not pronounced.

Vocabulary
Learn the following words. The words of the previous lesson are mentioned again, but this time we also show what article(s) to use (remember that the definite feminine article is -a, and not ei..

Exercises

Exercise A: Translate to English:
1) En katt er et dyr.
2) Det er et hus.
3) Moren har en hund.
4) Boken er på bordet.
5) Barnet har en lekse.
6) Bestemoren og bestefaren leser avisa.
7) Faren er hjemme.

Exercise B: Translate to Norwegian:
1) The grandmother has a cat.
2) A dog is an animal.
3) The table has a book.
4) The grandmother and the grandfather have a dog.
5) The mother has a dog and the father has a cat.
6) We have a table.
7) They have the house.

Solutions

Solution to Exercise A:
1) A cat is an animal.
2) This is a house.
3) The mother has a dog.
4) The book is on the table.
5) The children have homework.
6) The grandmother and the grandfather read the newspaper.
7) The father is at home.

Solution to Exercise B:
1) Bestemoren har en katt.
2) En hund er et dyr.
3) Bordet har en bok.
4) Bestemoren og bestefaren har en hund.
5) Moren har en hund og faren har en katt.
6) Vi har et bord.
7) De har huset.

Lesson 3: The Present of the Verbs

So far you have met three verbal forms in Norwegian: er, har and leser. All of them end in r. Coincidence?! Absolutely not! This is the ending for the present tense of the Norwegian verbs!

The verb er, to be, is irregular: its infinitive is å være. But the other two verbs are regular. Based on this, what would be the rule for making the present tense of a regular Norwegian verb? You got it right if you said: just add an r to its bare infinitive. So, ha becomes har, and lese becomes leser. And these forms can be used for all persons! It couldn't be easier, could it? In fact, most of the Norwegian verbs end in e (kjenne...