Jeg liker å lese bøker.

I like to read books.

Breakdown of Jeg liker å lese bøker.

• jeg: I
• bok: the book
• å: to
• lese: to read

Questions & Answers about Jeg liker å lese bøker.

Why does the sentence begin with ‘Jeg’?

‘Jeg’ is the subject pronoun meaning I, and in Norwegian, as in English, it most commonly appears at the start of the sentence to indicate who is performing the action.

What does ‘liker’ mean?

‘liker’ is the present tense form of the Norwegian verb that means to like. It follows jeg to show that I am the one who likes something.

Why do we have ‘å’ before ‘lese’?

‘å’ is the marker for the infinitive form of a verb in Norwegian. Here, å lese means to read. Whenever you want to express to + verb (like to read or to play), you use å before the verb in Norwegian.

Why is ‘bøker’ used instead of the singular form?

‘bøker’ is the plural form of bok. Since the sentence is about reading multiple books in general, Norwegian uses the plural form. In other contexts, you might say bok if you are referring to just one book.

Do I need any article before ‘bøker’?

In Norwegian, when speaking about things in a general sense (like books in general), you typically just use the plural form without any article. Thus, bøker on its own works fine for saying books in general.

How do you pronounce ‘Jeg liker å lese bøker’?

• Jeg is pronounced roughly as /yai/ (short, with a sound like the English word ‘I’).
• liker is like /LEE-ker/, with a soft r.
• å is pronounced like /oh/.
• lese is /LEH-seh/.
• bøker is /BEU-ker/ with the ø sounding similar to the vowel in the British pronunciation of fur.