Tell me plural of these Norwegian nouns?

Question

I'm looking at Norwegian dictionary and see that some nouns has definite and indefinite forms in singular and plural. But some have only 2 forms in singular. WHAT IS PLURAL?

mor (indefinite, singular)
mora/moren (definite, singular)
mødre (indefinite, plural)
mødrene (definite, plural)

...BUT...

journalist (indefinite, singular)
journalisten (definite, singular)

arkitekt (indefinite, singular)
arkitekten (definite, singular)

Answer 1

plural for the "regular" nouns you list:

journalister, journalistene



arkitekter

arkitektene



Since these are regular plurals, dictionaries generally do NOT list them.



(Mine will, if you can wait a few years!)



The issue is that a word like mor 'mother' is an ei noun and thus has two alternative singular definite forms -- moren and mora.



You should have a look at my website (below) where I list nouns and their 4 forms.

Answer 2

Yes, as Louie said, they are both plural, the Norwegian language has three genders; masculine, feminine, and neuter.

The feminine form is heavily used in the spoken language and in Nynorsk (the other Norwegian language), therefore it is listed, despite the fact that the written language usually uses masculine form most of the time (this is because the feminine form does not exist in Danish, which modern Norwegian spelling rules were originally based off a century and a half ago).

The second is the masculine form, the first is the feminine form. Many Norwegian teachers abroad will only teach their students masculine and neuter forms, as feminine is rarely used. However, using a lot of masculine form while talking is considered snobbish in most of Norway, except in the capital. That's why it is always useful to keep the feminine form in the back of your head while talking to a Norwegian.

Answer 3

The correct answer has been given; however, I want to comment on what Richyboy has written: Your statement concerning the feminine form is not really valid; many dialects do not use it, and it is not considered snobbish to rather use the masculine form...



Where I´m from, we don´t use it, not in spoken, nor in written language. Today, you can decide whether you want to use the feminine or masculine form of nouns when writing bokmål; both are officially correct. As far as dialects, there are so many, and there is really not a right or wrong; perhaps personal preference, but since we have as many dialects, the general public doesn´t consider any to be "snobbish" and so forth.