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Compound words in Norwegian

Languages have a pattern of how they connect more than one word or word element to create a new word. Norwegian is not an exception.
Unfortunately the rules are not fixed enough for you to create many new words you have never seen before.
Rather, it is a list to help you understand word you encounter.


Compound nouns in Norwegian

The creation of compound nouns is quite straight forward in Norwegian. They are often connected to a single word but pronounced as if they are two seperate words.
F.eks. Fotball (football) + spiller (player) -> Fotballspiller (Football player)
Sykehus (hospital) + lege (doctor) -> Sykehuslege (Hospital doctor/doctor in a hospital)

In many situations you can express the same without using a compound noun. F. eks. "Lege på sykehus" (doctor on a hospital)


Opposite meaning with prefixes

Norwegian has two combinations that work exactly as the English prefixes "un-" and "mis-".
They even look almost exactly the same with "u-" and "mis-". They are naturally not used in all the same words as in English, but they are very common.

U + "Vanlig" (common) -> "Uvanlig" (uncommon)
Mis + "Forstå" (understand) -> "Misforstå" (misunderstand)


Common suffixes in Norwegian

To a large extent also suffixes show large similarities to English.

We can for example in Norwegian make nouns out of adjectives with two very common suffixes.
"Snill" (kind) + het -> "Snillhet" (kindness)
"Lat" (lazy) + skap -> "Latskap" (Lazyness)

We can also make nouns out of verbs by using the base form of the verb + suffix.
Note the first suffix "-ing" which in Norwegian does NOT indicate a verb form.
å snakke (to talk) -e +ing -> "snakking" (talking, noun)
å søke (to apply) -e +nad -> "søknad" (application)


Summary: As mentioned above, these combinations are not common enough for you to be able to create new words you haven't seen before.
However, if you recognize these combinations when you see them it will be easier to remember similar words.
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