Adjectives

Hei, og velkommen til ukens grammatikk-video om ubestemt form av adjektivet. Welcome to this weeks presentation about the inflection of the adjective in norwegian. Enjoy the presentation! Adjective inflection. In Norwegian adjectives are inflected in number and gender It means that an adjective takes on different forms in singular and plural, and in masculine, femine and neuter. Knowing the gender of a Norwegian noun helps you choose the correct inflection of the adjective describing that noun. In attributive form the adjectives are placed in front of the noun to which they refer. The masculine form of the adjective is the form that you find in a dictionary. The form is then modified according to the number and gender of the noun the adjective describes.

The feminine presents the same form of the masculine, but neuter adjectives mark the gender with a T at the end. That’s why you have En brun stol, ei brun seng BUT et brunt bord. The neuter gender of the noun «bord» is also marked on the adjective «brunt». In the plural, on the other hand, the ending is the same regardless of the gender of the noun. So we have brune stoler, brune senger and brune bord. In Predicative form, the adjectives are connected to the noun with the verb er, present tense of to be, «å være» and are positioned after the verb. BUT the same rules for number and gender apply here as well.

Then we have Stolen er brun, Senga er brun, Bordet er brunt and Stolene/sengene/bordene er brune.

Notice that with predicatives the nouns they describe are often used in definite form: stolen/the chair, senga/ the bed, bordet/ the table and in plural stolene/sengene/bordene= the chairs, the beds, the tables Now, let’s talk about colours. Colour adjectives behaves generally as other adjectives. That means that they are inflected in number and gender as in brun, brunt, brune; gul, gult, gule, rød, rødt, røde and hvit, hvitt, hvite. Pay attention to the pronunciation of the neutral form of the colour. Because of the ending in T, the vowels get short, so while you pronounce brun with a long U, you have to say brunt with a short U. The same apply to gult, rødt and hvitt.

There are then some colours which present a hybrid type of inflection, that means that

they follow the general rules with some modifications: Blå and Grå follow the rule for the neutral with blått and grått, but in the plural may or may not take the ending in E. So you can have blå and blåe, grå and gråe. Both forms are accepted in modern Norwegian. Green /Grønn loses one N in the neutral form, this happens mostly to avoid not traditional combination with 3 consonants. For similar reasons, that is avoiding unusual consonants combination, Svart/Black doesn’t add any more T in the neutral form, because a T is already included in the name of the colour itself Finally, we have some colours which never change their form. Lilla, oransje and rosa remain the same regardless of number and gender.

Let’s practise a little bit In the next two slides you’ll see some objects. I want to ask you to name the objects and tell which colour they have. In Norwegian of course!

Try to make simple sentences like: Det er et blått bord – There is a blue table Hvilken farge har bordet? Bordet er blått. – The table is blue Hva er det? Hvilken farge har det?

Det er et brunt, et hvit og et oransje skap Det er en hvit, en rød og en lilla kaffekopp Det er en blå flaske Det er to gule nøkler og en grønn nøkkel Fasit - Answers Det er to brune flasker – Flaskene er brune Det er to grønne bord – Bordene er grønne Det er to røde lenestoler – Lenestolene er røde Det er en svart kontorstol – Kontorstolen er svart Det er en grønn og oransje stol – Stolen er grønn og oransje Det er et blått bord – Bordet er blått Det er en grønn seng med blå madrasser – Sengen er grønn, og madrassene er blå Det er en rød picknick-benk – Benken er rød.

I hope you enjoyed playing with colors, if you want to learn more about adjectives you find extra grammar resources in the download section. Lykke til!