Vekstsesongen er kort.

Because Norwegian, like German, very often makes compound nouns by joining words together.

Here:

• vekst = growth
• sesong = season

So vekstsesong literally means growth season, which English expresses as growing season.

Then the definite ending is added to the whole compound:

• vekstsesong = a growing season
• vekstsesongen = the growing season

A useful rule: in Norwegian compounds, the last part is the main noun, and that is the part that gets the definite ending.

-en is the definite singular ending for many masculine/common-gender nouns in Bokmål.

So:

• en sesong = a season
• sesongen = the season

And with the compound:

• en vekstsesong = a growing season
• vekstsesongen = the growing season

So Norwegian often puts the at the end of the noun instead of using a separate word like English does.

Because Norwegian usually expresses definiteness by attaching it to the noun.

Compare:

• English: the season
• Norwegian: sesongen

That is the normal pattern in simple noun phrases.

You can also have a separate determiner in some cases, but then Norwegian often uses double definiteness:

• den korte vekstsesongen = the short growing season

Here you get both:

• den = a separate definite word
• -en in vekstsesongen = the definite ending on the noun

But in your sentence, the noun stands alone as the subject, so vekstsesongen by itself is exactly what you would expect.

Because the sentence is talking about the growing season as a known or specific thing.

In context, this usually means something like:

• the growing season in a certain country
• the growing season in a certain region
• the growing season as a general concept being discussed

Using the definite form is very natural in Norwegian here.

If you said En vekstsesong er kort, that would mean A growing season is short, which sounds more general, abstract, or less natural in many contexts.

So Vekstsesongen er kort is the normal way to say that a particular place has a short growing season.

Er means is. It is the present tense of å være = to be.

So:

• jeg er = I am
• du er = you are
• han/hun er = he/she is
• vi er = we are

Unlike English, Norwegian does not change the present-tense form depending on the subject. It is always er.

So in this sentence:

• Vekstsesongen er kort = The growing season is short

Because after er, the adjective is used predicatively, and here kort is the correct singular form.

Compare:

• en kort sesong = a short season
• sesongen er kort = the season is short

But korte is used in other situations, especially:

• with plurals: sesongene er korte = the seasons are short
• before a definite noun: den korte sesongen = the short season

So:

• Vekstsesongen er kort = correct
• Vekstsesongen er korte = not correct for a singular subject

No, this is very basic Norwegian word order:

• Vekstsesongen = subject
• er = verb
• kort = adjective/complement

So the pattern is:

subject + verb + complement

This is the normal order in a simple statement.

If another element comes first, Norwegian still keeps the verb in second position:

• I Norge er vekstsesongen kort. = In Norway, the growing season is short.

That verb-second pattern is a very important feature of Norwegian.

A rough English-friendly approximation is:

VEKST-seh-SONG-en

A few helpful points:

• vekst has a tight consonant cluster at the end: -kst
• sesong sounds roughly like seh-SONG
• -en at the end is the definite ending

And kort is roughly like:

kort

with a short o sound, not like English court.

If you want to sound more natural, listen carefully to how native speakers handle the consonant cluster in vekst- and the ng sound in sesong.

No. In Norwegian, common nouns are not capitalized unless they begin a sentence.

So:

• Vekstsesongen er kort. = capitalized because it is the first word of the sentence
• Jeg vet at vekstsesongen er kort. = lowercase in the middle of a sentence

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