Glasurbrenningen begynner med en gang glasuren og keramikkovnen er klare.

to be

Breakdown of Glasurbrenningen begynner med en gang glasuren og keramikkovnen er klare.

• og: and
• begynne: to begin
• klar: ready

Questions & Answers about Glasurbrenningen begynner med en gang glasuren og keramikkovnen er klare.

Why is glasurbrenningen written as one word?

Because Norwegian usually writes compound nouns as a single word.

Here, glasurbrenningen is built like this:

• glasur = glaze
• brenning = firing / burning
• -en = the definite singular ending

So:

• glasurbrenning = glaze firing
• glasurbrenningen = the glaze firing

A useful rule is that the last part of a Norwegian compound is the main noun. That is the part that decides the gender and how the word is inflected.

Why are glasuren and keramikkovnen definite?

In Norwegian, definiteness is usually shown by adding an ending to the noun, rather than by using a separate word like the.

So:

• glasur → glasuren
• keramikkovn → keramikkovnen

This is one of the biggest differences from English. English says the glaze and the ceramic kiln, but Norwegian often puts the the idea at the end of the noun instead.

Also, these nouns are definite because the sentence is talking about the specific glaze and the specific kiln involved in that process, not just any glaze or any kiln.

Why is there no separate word for the before those nouns?