How To Conjugate Norwegian Verbs

The Basics

First of all, Norwegian verbs are not conjugated in person and number (as they are in English). What does this mean? Let me show you an example to illustrate the English conjugation of a verb versus the Norwegian conjugation of the same verb:

As you can see, the Norwegian conjugation of verbs is not affected by which person it is or if it’s singular or plural, considering the correct form is er in all the different persons above.

Secondly, Norwegian verbs come in several different tense forms as in all languages. This article is going to explain the five most common and useful tense forms:

But before we start on that, let's go through how to conjugate Norwegian verbs that are regular and irregular.

Regular Verbs

Regular verbs, also called weak verbs, are verbs that follow a standard pattern when it comes to conjugation. It is unfortunately no way to know whether a Norwegian verb is regular or irregular just by looking at it - this is something you just have to learn for each verb. A tip is to use the language and expose yourself to the language as often as possible. The conjugation of the most common verbs will then after a while come naturally.

Regular Norwegian verbs are divided into four categories. I will now show you the conjugation of one verb from each category. Remember that when we're talking about the *verb stem *or the stem of the verb, we're most often talking about the infinitive minus -e. The stem simply means the base of the verb - the verb without any suffixes (endings).

Category #1

Rule: when the stem of the Norwegian verb ends with more than one consonant (in our case: two consonants - st), the preterite form and present perfect form is often the stem plus et/a (more information about et/a is below under ""How to conjugate Norwegian verbs in preterite""). Unfortunately there are exceptions.

Category #2

Rule: if the stem of the verb ends with one consonant (in the example above: s), the preterite form ends with -*te *and the present perfect form ends with -t.

Category #3

Rule: if the infinitive of the verb ends with a stressed vowel, the preterite form usually ends with *-dde *and the present perfect usually ends with -dd. A stressed vowel means that it's a relative emphasis ('more force') on that vowel in the word. Unfortunately there are exceptions to this rule.

Category #4

Rule: if you have a verb whose stem ends with either 1) a diphthong, 2) the letter v, or 3) the letter *g, *the preterite form will be the stem plus -*de, *while the present perfect form will be the stem plus -d.

Irregular Verbs

Norwegian irregular verbs are often irregular because of a vowel shift in the verb stem of verbs in preterite. The present perfect often ends in -et and can also have a different vowel.  Irregular verbs and their conjugation is something you just have to memorize like in any other language. Here are some common irregular verbs in Norwegian:

Infinitive

The infintive form of an English verb is the form in which you can put the infinitive marker to in front of. Examples of this in English are: *to talk, to swim *and to listen. In Norwegian the infinitive marker is å (read this article to learn more about this letter: The Norwegian Alphabet). The same examples would be like this in Norwegian: *å snakke, å svømme *and å høre/lytte. This can be combined with other verbs in daily-life sentences. Let's look at some examples:

Verbs in infinitive are also used in combination with Norwegian auxiliary verbs. When you do this, you do not use the infintive marker, å, in front of the verbs. Here are some examples:

Present Tense

Present (presens in Norwegian) is the form of the verb you want to use if you for instance want to express that you are doing something right now. An example of that can be (the infinitives are marked in bold):

The example above means that you are working right now. You can also use the present tense to express something that's going to happen in the future. Here's an example of this:

Preterite

Preterite is a form of a verb you generally use if you want to express something that happened at a specific point of time in the past. Many Norwegian verbs have preterite and present perfect forms that are the stem of the verb plus either *et *or a. Which one you choose is a stylistic choice, but *et *is more formal than a. Here's an example of a Norwegian verb in preterite in a sentence:

Present Perfect

Present perfect is in Norwegian most often used when referring to something that happened in the past without talking about a definite past time. With the present perfect the past event has current relevance. Norwegian and English follow the same pattern here, considering that both use the auxiliary verb å ha/*to have *in order to express this verb form. An example of this can be:

Present Future

When you want to express something that's going to happen in the future, you use the verb form present future. The common way to do this is to use an auxiliary verb in present plus the infinitive of the verb you're using. Note that the infinitive is used without the infinitive marker. The most common auxiliary verb to use in this form is å skulle.

Another common auxiliary verb is å ville. Here is an example:

Notice the difference between between Vi skal dra nå and Vi vil dra nå. The first example means We're going to leave now, while the second example brings in a nuance of wishing to do something. Compare it to: We want to leave now.

Conclusion

You have now learned how to conjugate Norwegian verbs in many verb forms. We've looked at the pattern both regular and irregular Norwegian verbs follow, and then described the most common tense forms infinitive, present, preterite, present perfectum and present future in the Norwegian language.

To complement this article, feel free to watch our video showing you how to conjugate 10 useful and basic verbs in Norwegian. The video can be found here.

Okay, now you know how to conjugate Norwegian verbs. We can now make simple sentences in Norwegian, but something is missing... Nouns! Are you ready for more? Let's learn how to inflect Norwegian nouns.