- Forum >
- Topic: Norwegian (Bokmål) >
- "He is not writing a book."
"He is not writing a book."
Translation:Han skriver ikke en bok.
22 Comments
829
"et" is neuter, "en" is masculine, "ei" is female. This is the grammatical gender and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the gender of a person. For example, it's correct to say "en jente" (but "ei jente" works as well), even though "jente" is female.
This concept of grammatical gender might be a bit harder to grasp for native english speakers, as in english you only have one article: The. It's just something you have to try and memorize. But don't worry, natives will understand you even though you may use the wrong gender every now and then.
829
Actually, "bok" is a feminine noun, but in bokmål every feminine noun can be written as a masculine noun.
As to WHY "bok" is feminine/masculine and not neuter: I don't think even linguists know the reason for grammatical genders (or if they do, I haven't read about it). They don't follow any real logic, and you just have to memorize it.
In german, for example, "Buch" is a neuter noun, in french it's masculine (le livre). As I've said: There's no logic to it.
829
See my previous answer to CoDLiTe: Bok actually is a feminine noun, but can be used as a masculine noun in bokmaal.