Gender in Norwegian nouns
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This page relates to the application A Norwegian Grammar Sparrer, see A Norwegian Grammar Sparrer.
Common nouns in Norwegian belong to a gender: ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’ or ‘neuter’. (In some versions of Norwegian there are only two options, the marking of feminine having disappeared or nearly disappeared. In these versions, one sometimes refers to the remaining non-neuter gender as ‘common gender’. Here we will assume the three-gender system.) The gender of a noun reveals itself in the form of the inflections for number and definiteness; typical forms of the suffixes are as indicated below:
feature | masculine | feminine | neuter |
indefinite plural | er | er | Ø (zero) |
definite singular | en | a | et |
definite plural | ene | ene | ene or a |
The gender also can show itself in agreement. See
. Agreement in Norwegian noun phrases