Nothing speeds up communication like a good pronoun! 🙂 Instead of having to repeat a personal name umpteen times, it’s really great that once everybody agrees on a topic, ”you” can manage with a short ”I” or ”she”. At first glance, Norwegian pronomen look a lot like the English ones:

Jeg venter på trikken. (I’m waiting for the tram.)

Unnskyld, du mistet noe! (Excuse me, you lost something!)

Hun tenker mye. (She thinks a lot.)

Han har aldri tid. (He never has time.)

Vi bor i Molde. (We live in Molde.)

De besøker ofte Ålesund. (They often visit Ålesund.)

Then of couse, Norwegian’s got a special plural you (”thou and thou”):

Hva synes dere om Norge? (What do you guys think about Norway?)

The language has also got two different ways of saying ”it” – depending on whether the thing referred to is neuter (an ”et” noun) or masculine/feminine (an ”en”/”ei” noun):

Har du sett veska mi? Den er svart med sølvstriper. Have you seen my bag? It’s black with silver stripes.

Har du sett passet mitt? Det er fra USA. (Have you seen my passport? It’s from the U.S.)

When ”it” is referring to something other than a noun – like a phrase or a situation – only det is used:

Jeg hater at det er så mye krig i verden. Det gjør meg så deppa! (I hate that there’s so much war in the world. It makes me so depressed!)

I think the greatest difficulty for English-speakers comes with the ”me” forms of pronouns (accusative/dative/reflexive, if you speak grammar!)

Du ser meg, og jeg ser deg. (You see me, and I see you.)

Kjeder dere dere? (Are you guys bored? – Literally: Do you guys bore yourselves?)

Nei, vi kjeder oss aldri! (No, we’re never bored! – ”We never bore ourselves.”)

Jeg ringer når jeg finner den/det. (I’ll give you a call when I find it!)

Hun ser ham, og han ser henne. (She sees him, and he sees her.)

Hun ser seg i speilet. (She sees herself in the mirror.)

Seg points back to either han, hun or de, and can be translated as ”herself”, ”himself”, ”themselves”. But this is where you need to be careful! 🙂 Because if you drop the phrase

Hun ser henne i speilet

it means that she sees someone else in the mirror, like her friend standing nearby! This is a Norwegian oddity which will become even more tricky in the next post, where we’ll look at possessive pronouns! 🙂