Det er ingen buss i dag.

to be

Breakdown of Det er ingen buss i dag.

• i dag: today
• det: it
• bussen: the bus

Questions & Answers about Det er ingen buss i dag.

Why does this sentence start with Det er? Can't I just say Ingen buss i dag?

In Norwegian, existential statements (“there is/are”) usually use the dummy subject Det er (literally “It is”). Without Det er, Ingen buss i dag sounds like a fragment or a headline. Adding Det er makes it a full sentence: “There is no bus today.”

What exactly does ingen mean here? How is it different from ikke + noe?

Ingen is a negative indefinite adjective placed directly before a noun, meaning “no” or “not any.”
– You say ingen buss (“no bus”).
Ikke is a negating adverb and needs a pronoun like noe (“something”) if you want “not any.” That construction usually replaces a clause, e.g. Jeg har ikke noe busskort (“I don’t have any bus ticket”), but you wouldn’t say Det er ikke noe buss to mean “there is no bus.”

Why is there no article before buss? Shouldn’t it be en buss?

Because ingen already negates and expresses indefiniteness, you drop any article. If you said en buss, it would mean “one bus,” which clashes with ingen (“no bus”). So the form is simply ingen buss.

Could I move i dag to the front? For example: I dag er det ingen buss?