Is Norwegian Hard to Learn? A Straightforward Guide For Beginners 

Thinking of learning Norwegian, but wondering is Norwegian hard to learn?

In truth, Norwegian is not at all difficult to learn for English speakers. After all, 50.000 Americans in the Midwest speak it.

And Norwegian grammar has much in common with English, because both languages derive from the Germanic language group.

The Norwegian language has also been susceptible to anglicisation. So while you discover the vocabulary, you'll find a few old friends there, though most of them might have a different pronunciation. 

That said, there still might be some reasons that might put you off learning the language, like:

1. There are several Norwegian languages.  
2. Norwegian uses three genders. 
3. Some of the letters look strange. 
4. The pronunciation differs from the written words. 

Let’s take a closer look at these apprehensions so that you can get an accurate answer to the question: is Norwegian hard to learn?

How Many Norwegian Languages Are In Use Today? 

Norway officially uses 3 languages: Bokmål, Nynorsk and Sámi. In addition, you will at some point come over the term Riksmål when you look at Norwegian languages. 

Sámi is a self-contained language that has little in common with the other Nordic vocabularies. It is spoken by the Sámi, the indigenous population of the Scandinavian countries and used by less than 1% of the population in Norway. 

Nynorsk comes from a collection of Norwegian dialects assembled in the 19^th century into a common language. It’s currently spoken by 10-15% of the Norwegian population, mainly in the west of the country. 

Bokmål is the Norwegian language spoken by almost 90% of the population. It’s an adaptation of Riksmål, a Norwegian standard of the Danish language, developed in the 19^th century and still used in written form by so-called purists among certain writers and academics.

The difference between Bokmål and Riksmål can be compared to British English and American English. This post covers exclusively Bokmål. 

The Three Genders In Norwegian 

Giving inanimate objects genders can be a difficult concept for English language speakers, especially because many gender-assignments don't make sense.

Why, for example, is ei bok (a book) female, but et bord (a table) neutral and en bil (a car) male? 

The Norwegian genders for nouns are et (male), ei (female) and en (neutral) and you will mostly learn their correct assignment by practising the language through reading, listening or speaking it yourself.  

Luckily there are some simple rules you can follow to make the gender-assignment easier to begin with. 

Norwegian Gender Rules 

When you first begin to learn Norwegian, you will usually be taught the article that gives you the gender of a noun together with the new word.

As your vocabulary increases, you sometimes might feel overwhelmed and forget, but there are a couple of pointers in the Norwegian language you should keep in mind: 

1. Living beings have the article assigned that corresponds to their sex. 

• a man – en mann; a woman – ei kvinne 
• a boy – en gutt; a girl – ei jente 
• a bull – en okse; a cow – ei ku 
• a cockerel – en hane; a chicken – ei høne 

2. Norwegian words ending in –het, -sjon or –else are always male 
3. Norwegian words ending in –inne and –ing are usually female.  
4. The neutral article is commonly assigned to words ending in –ment, –em, –gram, –um and –skap. However, here are a few exceptions, especially when the root of the word originally came from a foreign language. 

Unfortunately, none of this means that inanimate objects automatically become neutral. You still will have to pay attention to the article whenever you learn a new Norwegian word.

On the bright side, Norwegians themselves in recent years have made the article assignment easier. The differentiation between male and female articles is increasingly blurred and the female ei is nowadays often replaced by the male en. 

Definite vs. Indefinite Articles Singular 

The bar is raised further, when you want to make a noun definite. Where we in English just replace the “a” by simply positioning “the” in front of the word, the Norwegian language moves the article to the end of the noun.  

Here are some examples: 

• en gutt (a boy) – gutten (the boy) 
• ei jente (a girl) – jenta (the girl) 
• et barn (a child) – barnet (the child) 

You will have noticed that ei in the female article turns into an “a” when moved to the end of the word, but since this is universal for all female nouns, it should not be too difficult to remember. 

Definite vs. Indefinite Articles Plural 

But what happens, if there are more than one – as in boys and girls?

Again, the Norwegian language makes a distinction between the definite and the indefinite through the ending of a noun – by simply adding either –ene or –(e)r at the end. The latter is depending on if the word already ends in an e. 

If you're talking about a group of girls, they become jenter. The Norwegian language doesn't distinguish between genders in the plural, and a group of boys subsequently become gutter.

If it’s a particular group of these girls and these boys you're talking about, the Norwegian plural turns into jentene and guttene. The beauty here is, that you no longer have to consider if it’s these or those girls and boys, as the ending –ene already includes the determination. 

However, there are countless exceptions to the plural ending rule and to begin with it might seem confusing. By persistent reading of short stories in Norwegian you will soon get a hang of it and spot the exceptions in no time at all. 

Norwegian Verbs 

There’s no beating about the bush, but Norwegian has irregular verbs. Luckily, these amount only to just over 150, while German and English in comparison have approximately 200 and French a minimum of 350.

The catch is that even the regular verbs fall into four different conjugation groups once you move around the different tenses. 

As a rule of thumb, regular verbs in Norwegian change the ending of the verb in the past tense into either -et, -t, -d or -dd. What group the individual verbs will fall into, depends on their root, here marked in bold. 

• Group 1: å huske (to remember) – huske (remember) – husket (remembered) – ha husket (have remembered) 
  • Verbs fall in this group, when their root ends with two consonants. 
• Group 2: å lære (to learn) – lære (learn) – lærte (learned) – ha lært (have learnt) 
  • Verbs in this group have a single consonant at the end of their root. 
• Group 3: å leve (to live) – leve (live) – levde (lived) – ha levd (have lived) 
  • When a root of a verb ends in v, g or ei/oy, it will end up in this group. 
• Group 4: å tro (to believe) – tror (believe) – trodde (believed) – ha trodd (have believed) 
  • The last group is reserved for verbs with a root ending on a strongly pronounced vowel. 

Irregular verbs don't change their ending once they move into the past, but often receive a new vowel within the word. 

å skyte (to shoot) – skyter (shoot) – skjøt (shot) – ha skutt (have shot) 

This might sound like a lot to take on board while also trying to catch up on the vocabulary, but the rules are easy to apply once you’ve started learning Norwegian.

When you have accumulated a basic knowledge of Norwegian verbs, you will realise that you are able to assign them to their categories without even thinking about it. 

For more on this topic, check out my complete post on Norwegian verb conjugation.

Norwegian Adjectives 

A noun and a verb alone do not make a sentence complete. To make it interesting, you need adjectives.

Even though there are again exceptions, Norwegian adjective rules are overall straightforward. As in most European languages, Norwegian adjectives are also defined by the noun or pronoun they describe. 

In most circumstances, there are three forms to consider when placing an adjective in a sentence: masculine/feminine, neutral, and plural. The male/female version represents the original, while the neutral adds a ‘t’ at the end, and the plural an ‘e’.

• m/f: en gul blomst (a yellow flower) / ei stor jente (a big girl) 
• n: et gult hus (a yellow house) / et stort barn (a big child) 
• pl: gule biler (yellow cars) / store øyne (big eyes) 

Now that you have learned some of the principles in the Norwegian language, you can start building your own sentences. How about: 

Snart vil jeg snakke flytende norsk (Soon I shall speak Norwegian fluently). 

The Letters Æ, Ø and Å 

The Norwegian alphabet counts 29 letters and æ, ø and å are the last three. Outside the Nordic countries, these letters seem exotic and are often wrongly used in graphic design to freshen up a logo etc.

In the Norwegian language, æ, ø and å have a distinct place as vowels and are part of many words and names. The letter ‘å’ standing alone also represents the English to, as in å gå (to go), å lese (to read) or å kjøre (to drive). 

Examples 

• Æ/æ: en ære (an honour), å lære (to learn), færre (less), Æthelred (English king). 
• Ø/ø: en ørn (an eagle), å spørre (to ask), tørr (dry), Øivind (Norwegian name). 
• Å/å: en ånd (spirit), å foreslå (to suggest), dårlig (bad), Åsa (Norwegian name). 

Despite the Norwegian alphabet being a whole 3 letters longer, the practical use of the language leaves out 5 letters: c, q, w, x and z.

These will never be part of any indigenous Norwegian word but can appear in foreign expressions taken into the language. 

Pronunciation Of Æ, Ø And Å 

Even though these Norwegian letters seem unfamiliar at first glance, you will find similar sounds in the pronunciation of the English language. 

• Æ/æ – like the English ‘a’ as in “at”, “actually” and “fact”. 
• Ø/ø – has no single corresponding English letter but is pronounced like the ‘i’ in “bird” or “flirt”. 
• Å/å – like the English ‘o’ as in “go”, “more” and “often”. 

Once you’ve started using those three vowels, you can proudly walk into the next fancy British coffee shop with an ø instead of an o at the end of bistro and tell them how silly it really sounds when pronounced. 

How To Speak Norwegian 

The three additional vowels in the alphabet are not the only distinctive differences to English. In fact, reading the Norwegian alphabet out loud can take many into a topsy-turvy world.

The English o becomes a Norwegian å, while the Norwegian o really is pronounced like the British oo and sometimes a u. A Norwegian j transforms into an English y and a d at the end of a Norwegian word often completely disappears – as does the h in the beginning of certain words.

But things get really interesting when you look at words consisting of letters your English teacher told you never to add after one another: 

Kj  

kjole (dress), kjæreste (lover), kjølig (cold)  

This sound has no English equivalent. The closest you come to pronouncing it is by softening your ‘ch’, as in “check” or “chocolate”. 

Tj  

tjeneste (service), tjue (twenty), tjære (tar) 

Pronounced like ‘kj’, with a hint of a ‘t’ as in “witch” or “watch”. 

Sj/Skj 

sjø (sea), sjakk (chess), skjorte (shirt) 

This sound is close to the English ‘sh’ in shoulder or shackles. 

ei, ai, au, øy 

(Common Norwegian diphthongs where two vowels slide into each other) 

• feil (mistake) – is pronounced like the English eye 
• hai (shark) – sounds close to the greeting Hi 
• fortau (pavement) – is pronounced like the ‘ow’ in howl 
• øye (eye) – is close to the oy-sound in joy or toy. 

All these suggestions can obviously never really make up for the real thing. The best you can do to learn Norwegian pronunciation is listening to Norwegian podcasts or watching those rightfully popular Nordic Noir television series in their original version.

Reading short stories to get a feel for written Norwegian and its quirks can also quickly increase your vocabulary. 

So Is Norwegian Hard To Learn?

So is Norwegian hard to learn?

A British friend who has been living and working in Norway for more than 20 years is still not able to buy a train ticket in Oslo without falling back on his English.

His reasoning is he doesn’t need to learn the language because Norwegians are among the best non-native English speakers in the world.  

But if you, unlike my friend, do have the interest, determination and enthusiasm to learn Norwegian, then you can do it.

Apply the StoryLearning method and read short stories in Norwegian. You'll start picking up some of the trickier aspects of Norwegian in no time as you have fun while reading.

So, what are you waiting for?