fortelle means to tell in the sense of recounting something — a story, the news, the truth, what happened. It carries content from you to a listener, which is why it so often appears as fortelle noen noe ("tell someone something"). It looks like a regular weak verb until you reach the past tense, where a hidden vowel change surfaces: fortelle → fortalte (e → a). Knowing that single irregularity, and knowing when to reach for fortelle instead of si (say) or snakke (talk), is what this page is about.
Conjugation
Class: irregular weak. Endings are Class 2 (-te / -t), but the stem vowel changes e → a in the preterite and supine. Auxiliary: ha.
| Tense / mood | Norwegian | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitiv | å fortelle | to tell |
| Presens | forteller | tell(s) |
| Preteritum | fortalte | told |
| Perfektum | har fortalt | have/has told |
| Pluskvamperfektum | hadde fortalt | had told |
| Futurum | skal/vil fortelle | will tell |
| Imperativ | fortell! | tell! |
| Presens partisipp | fortellende | telling / narrative (adjective) |
fortelle noen noe — telling someone something
The default frame is ditransitive: you tell someone (the listener) something (the content). Word order puts the person first, then the thing:
- Han fortalte meg en hemmelighet. — He told me a secret.
- Fortell oss hva som skjedde. — Tell us what happened.
The listener can be dropped when it's obvious or unimportant (Han fortalte en historie — "He told a story"), but the content is almost always there. That is the heart of fortelle: it always has something to say, a story or a fact being conveyed.
Fortell meg en historie før jeg sovner.
Tell me a story before I fall asleep.
Hun fortalte oss at hun skulle flytte til Bergen.
She told us that she was going to move to Bergen.
Har du fortalt det til foreldrene dine ennå?
Have you told your parents about it yet?
Jeg forteller alltid sannheten — det lover jeg.
I always tell the truth — I promise.
fortelle om — telling about something
When the content is a topic rather than a clause, use fortelle om ("tell about / talk about"). This is how you say someone recounted their trip, their day, their childhood.
Han fortalte om turen til Lofoten i timevis.
He talked about the trip to Lofoten for hours.
Bestemor fortalte ofte om krigen da vi var små.
Grandma often told us about the war when we were little.
fortelle vs si vs snakke — the say/tell/talk split
English keeps "say," "tell," and "talk/speak" mostly separate, and so does Norwegian — but the lines fall in slightly different places. Here is the map:
| Verb | Core meaning | Typical frame |
|---|---|---|
| si | to say (report the words / a short statement) | si noe, si at…, si til noen |
| fortelle | to tell / narrate (convey content to a listener) | fortelle noen noe, fortelle om |
| snakke | to talk / speak (the activity, no content object) | snakke med noen, snakke om noe |
The most useful contrast for learners is si vs fortelle. Both can take "that"-clauses, but fortelle implies a richer act of recounting to a listener, while si just reports what words came out. You si a single line; you fortelle a whole story. And note the prepositions: it's si *til noen but *fortelle noen directly (no preposition) — a classic place to transfer the wrong English pattern.
Hun sa bare 'nei' og gikk.
She just said 'no' and left.
Hun fortalte hele historien fra begynnelse til slutt.
She told the whole story from beginning to end.
Vi snakket i to timer uten å merke tiden.
We talked for two hours without noticing the time.
fortelle in reported speech
Because fortelle is built to carry content, it is a workhorse of reported (indirect) speech. The standard frame is fortelle (noen) at + clause — "tell (someone) that…." Norwegian, unlike English, does not drop the conjunction at in careful speech as readily as English drops "that," and the word order inside the at-clause follows the normal subject–verb–object pattern (it does not invert the way a main clause does after a fronted element).
Notice too that Norwegian shifts tenses much as English does: a present-tense forteller introduces a present report, while a past-tense fortalte pulls the embedded verb back into the past (Hun fortalte at hun *var trøtt, "She said she *was tired"). This backshift is one place where the two languages line up neatly, so English speakers rarely go wrong on the tense logic — only on the verb choice and the missing til.
Han forteller at han skal begynne i ny jobb til høsten.
He says he's going to start a new job in the autumn.
Legen fortalte meg at prøvene var helt normale.
The doctor told me that the tests were completely normal.
Common Mistakes
❌ Han fortellte meg om turen.
Incorrect — the preterite changes the vowel: fortalte, not fortellte
✅ Han fortalte meg om turen.
He told me about the trip.
❌ Jeg har fortelt deg dette før.
Incorrect — the supine is fortalt (with a), not fortelt
✅ Jeg har fortalt deg dette før.
I've told you this before.
❌ Hun fortalte til meg en hemmelighet.
Incorrect — fortelle takes the listener directly: fortelle noen noe, no 'til'
✅ Hun fortalte meg en hemmelighet.
She told me a secret.
❌ Kan du si meg en historie?
Incorrect — for narrating a story use fortelle, not si
✅ Kan du fortelle meg en historie?
Can you tell me a story?
Key Takeaways
- fortelle / forteller / fortalte / har fortalt / fortell! — irregular weak, with e → a in the past.
- Ditransitive: fortelle noen noe (no til before the listener); fortelle om for a topic.
- Spelling traps: it's fortalte and fortalt (with a), never fortellte / fortelt.
- Use fortelle to narrate/recount, si to report words, snakke for the act of talking.
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- si vs fortelle vs snakke vs prate: Say/Tell/SpeakB1 — si reports the words said, fortelle conveys content to someone (narrating), snakke is the activity of talking or which language, and prate is casual chatting — a say/tell/speak split with different boundaries from English.
- si (to say)A1 — The full conjugation of si — present sier, preterite sa, supine sagt, imperative si — its silent g in sagt, the say/tell/speak split, and the key particles si til, si fra and si imot.
- Reported (Indirect) SpeechB1 — How to report what someone said with at-clauses, the subordinate word order that English speakers keep getting wrong, Norwegian's looser optional backshift, and reported questions with om and hv-words.
- snakke (to speak / talk)A1 — Full conjugation of the weak Class 1 verb snakke (snakke / snakker / snakket~snakka / har snakket) — the -et/-a preterite variants, snakke med / om, and how snakke differs from si, fortelle and prate.