Du er en kvinne.

You are a woman.

Breakdown of Du er en kvinne.

• være: to be
• du: you
• kvinne: the woman
• en: a

Questions & Answers about Du er en kvinne.

Why does the sentence use en instead of ei for kvinne?

In Norwegian Bokmål, kvinne can take the feminine article ei, but many speakers and writers use the common gender article en. So both en kvinne and ei kvinne are possible in Bokmål. However, en is more common in many regions and is considered standard.

How do I pronounce Du er en kvinne correctly?

• Du is pronounced similarly to “doo” in English.
• er rhymes with “air.”
• en often sounds like “en” but can sometimes be reduced to just “’n.”
• kvinne is roughly “kvinn-eh”; the “k” is pronounced, and the stress is on the first syllable.

Is the word order important here?

Yes, Norwegian typically follows a Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) pattern, just like English. So in Du er en kvinne, Du (subject) comes first, er (verb) follows, and en kvinne (object/predicate) comes last.

When should I capitalize du?

Unlike “you” in English, du is usually not capitalized unless it begins a sentence or appears in a title. Norwegian reserves capital letters mainly for the beginnings of sentences, proper nouns, and certain acronyms.

Does Du er en kvinne change if I’m addressing multiple women?

If you’re addressing more than one person, you would use dere instead of du. That would make the sentence Dere er kvinner (‘You are women’). The rest of the sentence changes to the plural form kvinner.