Barnet ser en engel.

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Breakdown of Barnet ser en engel.

• barnet: the child
• en: an
• engelen: the angel

Questions & Answers about Barnet ser en engel.

Why does barnet end in -et?

Because barnet is the definite singular form of et barn.

• et barn = a child
• barnet = the child

In Norwegian, the definite article is often added to the end of the noun instead of being a separate word in front, as it is in English.

Since the sentence starts with Barnet, it means the child, not a child.

Why isn’t there a separate word for the before barnet?

Norwegian usually puts the idea of the at the end of the noun as a suffix.

So instead of:

• English: the child

you often get:

• Norwegian: barnet

That -et already includes the meaning of the, so you do not add another article in front in a simple sentence like this.

Why is it en engel and not et engel?

Because engel takes the article en.

In Bokmål, nouns are assigned grammatical gender. Engel is a common-gender noun, so its indefinite singular form is:

• en engel = an angel

By contrast, barn is a neuter noun:

• et barn = a child

So the articles are different because the nouns belong to different genders.