Past tense - Preteritum

What did you do yesterday?

It’s a very simple question. It’s an ice breaker to start a conversation and it’s informative.

But could we ever have asked that question without the Past tense?

German and Roman languages just can’t. We organize our world, our thoughts and actions in our life in a timeline from past to present.

It is indeed quite incredible that we are able to share our history with the help of a small grammar feature…

Some languages have a complicated verb system. Norwegian doesn’t, but we do have two past tenses: Preteritum and Presens Perfektum.

This week’s grammar video is about Preteritum.

After the video, check the “Downloads” section.

We have added a summary table for the inflection of Norwegian verbs and an extra resource about time prepositions which we hope will help you understand the use of Norwegian tenses better.

Enjoy!