In this lesson, we are going to learn Norwegian with music! We will focus on the use of most common adjectives in singular and learn some words used to describe places.
The song we are going to listen to is called “Lite og Stort” and it is performed by a Norwegian band No. 4. Listen to the song and fill out the missing words:
Have you understood the song? Let’s practice the vocabulary:
When you have learned these Norwegian words, test yourself by answering this quiz.
Try to translate the song now. Don’t worry if you still don’t understand all the words, the most important is that you understand the main message 🙂 In case you really want to know how the whole song is translated, check out the lyrics here.
A bit of grammar!
Learn how to use adjectives in singular
In the song we find a lot of adjectives that describe places or things: stor, liten, bratt, glatt, kort, lang, etc. In Norwegian the form of adjectives changes depending on gender of a noun they describe. For masculine (and most feminine) nouns we use the form that we find in a dictionary. However, when we use a neuter noun, we normally have to add -t to the adjective.
Take a look at this line from the song “stort er landet vårt”. “Landet” means “the country” and it is a neuter noun; it uses article et. Because it is a neuter noun, we have to add -t to the adjective “stor” – “stort“.
Compare:
en stor by – a big city
et stort land – a big country.
!Note that we also add -t to the possessive pronoun “vår” (our) – “vårt”.
Compare:
vår by – our city
vårt land – our country.
If the adjective ends with -tt already, like bratt, glatt, we don’t need to add another -t to it. 🙂
Adjective “liten” – small
One of most frequently used adjectives that doesn’t follow the general rule is “liten” – small.
See this line from the song «i et lite hus, i en liten by» (in a small house, in a small town). As you noticed, the form changes as the gender of nouns changes.
This is how we change adjective “liten”:
en liten by – a small city
ei lita jente – a small girl
et lite hus – a small house
den lille byen – the small city (we use “lille” in a definite form in all genders).
Please note that this is a practice lesson based on a song. Consult your grammar book for a complete overview of the adjectives in Norwegian.
Now let’s practice!
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Did you like this lesson? Share it with your friends and feel free to leave some feedback in the comments! 🙂 Learn Norwegian online with our other grammar lessons: Is it Hvilken? Hvilket? or Hvilke?, How to use question words in Norwegian? and back to basics with Personal Pronouns.
The most beautiful song!!
Thanks for this great lesson. Make more like this, please!
Thanks! We are working on it 🙂