Animals(no)

Velkommen! Hva heter du?

Many animal names in Norwegian share etymological ties with English ones, but the meaning has drifted over time in one direction or another. Below are some examples.

Beware these false friends!

Norwegian		Translation	Related Word
hund	hunden	dog	hound
fugl	fuglen	bird	fowl
elg	elgen	moose	elk*
et dyr	dyret	animal	deer

*In British English, "elg" and "elk" are actual cognates. In American English, "elk" refers to a different animal.

The following words are true friends, meaning that the words are similar in both spelling and meaning.

Norwegian		English
katt	katten	cat
bjørn	bjørnen	bear
krabbe		crab
elefant		elephant
ulv	ulven	wolf
mus		mouse
hest	hesten	horse
en/ei and	anden	a duck
edderkopp	edderkoppen	spider

Grammatical and Biological Gender

After being introduced to nouns such as ei jente, en gutt, and et barn, you'd be forgiven for thinking that there was a correlation between a word's grammatical gender and it's biological gender, or sex.

However, this is not the case. Grammatical gender is a completely independent concept. While en hund/hunden is a masculine noun, that does not imply that the dog we're referring to is male, that's just the grammatical gender of the word itself.

Katter, hunder og hester er dyr.

Cats, dogs and horses are animals.