Tag Archives: inversion
4 ways Norwegian differs from English Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Aug 31, 2019
For speakers of English, learning Norwegian isn’t that hard: Both languages belong to the Germanic group and have a lot in common. (You can probably guess the meaning of words such as katt, melk, hus.) Still, there are some eye- (or rather ear!) popping differences: • Norwegian has grammatical genders. Every noun is either masculine…
Where not to put IKKE? Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jul 31, 2017
Ikke (not) phrases are often called negative phrases – even if some of them are very positive in meaning: Vi vil ikke ha mer krig! (We don’t want any more war!) Sometimes, though, even the most positive negative sentence can drive a poor language-learner mad: Where do(n’t) I put ikke? Let’s take some simple summer…
Mind your inversion Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jun 29, 2014
Norwegian grammar has a tiny detail that always gives away foreigners: Inversion. That basically means that in some situations you have to change the word order, and if you forget to do that in those situations, well, then you sound like a foreigner… 🙂 There’s inversion in English too. To make a phrase like “you…