Norwegian Grammar
Nouns
Norwegian nouns have a specified gender, this can be one of three genders: feminine (ei (sing. indefinite)), masculine (en) or neuter (et).
A common noun is the name of a generic thing, person or place. For example, hund (dog), jente (girl). These do not need capital letters unless they appear first in a sentence.
A proper noun refers to a single existing entity (i.e. a specific thing). For example, a city, country, person, or the name of a building. These always require a capital letter.
Verbs
Verbs are "doing" words, they represent an action (both physical and non-physical) being taken.
Norwegian verbs are conjugated based on the gender of the noun it relates to and they can have seven different conjugations. Please see below for Norwegian on the Web's (NoW) interpretation of this.
Pronouns
Pronouns are words that appear in the place of nouns. These are words like "he", "she" and "they".
Personal pronouns (nouns associated with one particular grammatical person) in their singular subject form is the best place to begin when learning a language. You will find these below.
I - Jeg
You - Du/Deg*
Him - Han
Her - Hun
It/That - Det
*If you're struggling to see the difference between "Du" and "Deg", think of it like this: use "deg" when it is you doing the action (e.g. Jeg elsker deg) and use "du" when you're having the action done to you (e.g. Du elsker meg).
Adjectives
Adjectives describe nouns.
As in English, Norwegian adjectives can be placed before and after nouns to make text descriptions more specific and defined.
Much like verbs, adjectives are conjugated based on the gender of the noun that they relate to and can take different forms depending on their position in a sentence and how the speaker/writer wants them to be interpreted by their audience. For example:
Pen (pretty) can be written in its simplest form "pen" in the sentence "Hun er pen" (she is pretty). However, changing this to be plural instead of singular changes the adjective: "De er pene" (they are pretty".
In addition to this, we can change the adjective to a superlative. A superlative is the highest degree of something, e.g. the most intelligent or the greatest dancer. Doing this would look like this: "Hun er den peneste" (she is the prettiest). The plural of this would be "De er de peneste" (they are the prettiest").