Hagehansken er våt.

Because Norwegian usually writes compound nouns as a single word.

• hage = garden
• hanske = glove

Together, hagehanske means garden glove or more naturally gardening glove.

Then Norwegian adds the definite ending to the whole compound:

• en hagehanske = a gardening glove
• hagehansken = the gardening glove

In Norwegian, the definite article is often attached to the end of the noun instead of being a separate word.

So:

• en hanske = a glove
• hansken = the glove

And with the compound:

• en hagehanske = a gardening glove
• hagehansken = the gardening glove

So -en is doing the job that the does in English.

The basic form is en hagehanske.

Here are the most useful forms:

• en hagehanske = a gardening glove
• hagehansken = the gardening glove
• hagehansker = gardening gloves
• hagehanskene = the gardening gloves

So if you look the word up, you would usually look for hagehanske.

It is a common gender noun, so it takes en in the indefinite singular:

• en hagehanske

Because it is common gender singular, the definite form ends in -en:

• hagehansken

This also helps explain why the adjective is våt and not vått.

Because adjectives in Norwegian agree with the noun in gender and number when they are used after er.

Here, hagehansken is:

• singular
• common gender

So the correct form is våt.

Compare:

• Hagehansken er våt. = singular common gender
• Håndkleet er vått. = singular neuter
• Hagehanskene er våte. = plural

A useful point: even though hagehansken is definite, the adjective after er is still chosen mainly by gender and number, not by definiteness.

Er is the present tense of å være, which means to be.

So:

• er = is / am / are

Unlike English, Norwegian uses the same present-tense form for all persons:

• jeg er
• du er
• han er
• vi er

So er is always the correct present form here.

Yes. This sentence follows a very familiar pattern:

• Hagehansken = subject
• er = verb
• våt = adjective/complement

So the structure is:

subject + verb + adjective

That is very similar to English The gardening glove is wet.

Yes. If the adjective is directly describing the noun, it goes before the noun.

For example:

• en våt hagehanske = a wet gardening glove

But in your sentence, the adjective comes after er because it is part of the statement about the noun:

• Hagehansken er våt. = The gardening glove is wet.

So compare:

• en våt hagehanske = a wet gardening glove
• Hagehansken er våt. = The gardening glove is wet

Yes, literally it is garden glove.

But in natural English, gardening glove is usually the better translation. This is very common with Norwegian compounds: the most literal translation is not always the most natural English one.

So you can think:

• literal: garden glove
• natural English: gardening glove

A rough pronunciation guide is:

• hagehansken ≈ HAH-guh-hahn-sken
• er ≈ air or a short ehr, depending on accent
• våt ≈ voht with a long å sound

Very roughly together:

HAH-guh-hahn-sken ehr voht

This is only an approximation, but it can help you get started.

No, not normally.

So hagehansken is lowercase. It only begins with a capital letter here because it is the first word of the sentence:

• Hagehansken er våt.

This is different from German, where all nouns are capitalized.

You would say:

Hagehanskene er våte.

Here the changes are:

• hagehansken → hagehanskene for definite plural
• våt → våte because the noun is now plural

So:

• Hagehansken er våt. = The gardening glove is wet.
• Hagehanskene er våte. = The gardening gloves are wet.