Breakdown of Jeg har spist for mye kake, og magen er helt full.
Questions & Answers about Jeg har spist for mye kake, og magen er helt full.
Both are possible, but they have slightly different nuances.
- Jeg har spist for mye kake is the present perfect (have eaten). It often suggests a connection to the present — the result matters now (your stomach is full because of it).
- Jeg spiste for mye kake is the simple past (ate). It just places the action in the past, often used when the time is clearly in the past (for example: I går spiste jeg for mye kake – Yesterday I ate too much cake).
In your sentence, using har spist fits well because the next part talks about your stomach being full right now.
- mye means a lot / much:
- Jeg har spist mye kake – I have eaten a lot of cake.
- for mye means too much (more than is good/appropriate):
- Jeg har spist for mye kake – I have eaten too much cake.
Here for is a degree adverb; it intensifies mye to mean that the amount is excessive.
In Norwegian, when you talk about an indefinite, uncountable amount of something (like cake, water, rice), you usually use the noun without an article:
- for mye kake – too much cake (cake as a substance / in general)
- mye vann – a lot of water
- for mye sukker – too much sugar
If you used a definite form like kaken, you would be talking about a specific cake:
- for mye av kaken – too much of the cake (a particular cake that both speakers know about).
For mye en kake is ungrammatical in this context.
- for mye kake = too much cake as a mass / uncountable thing (the amount is too large).
- for mange kaker = too many cakes (counting individual cakes).
So:
- Jeg har spist for mye kake – The quantity of cake (in general) is too large.
- Jeg har spist for mange kaker – The number of separate cakes is too high (e.g. three whole cakes).
The pattern is:
- mye with uncountable nouns (kake as a mass, vann, sukker)
- mange with countable plurals (kaker, bøker, venner).
In Norwegian, with body parts and clothes, it is very common to use the definite form of the noun instead of a possessive pronoun:
- Jeg har vondt i hodet. – My head hurts.
- Han tok av seg jakken. – He took off his jacket.
- Magen er helt full. – My stomach is completely full.
You could say Min mage er helt full, and it is grammatically correct, but it sounds more emphatic or marked. The natural, everyday version is with the definite noun magen.
Mage is a masculine noun.
- Indefinite singular: en mage – a stomach
- Definite singular: magen – the stomach
- Indefinite plural: mager
- Definite plural: magene
In the sentence, magen is the definite singular: the stomach (understood as my stomach in this context).
- full means full or filled.
- helt means completely / totally.
So:
- Magen er full. – My stomach is full.
- Magen er helt full. – My stomach is completely/totally full (there is really no more space).
You can absolutely say magen er full; adding helt just makes it stronger.
In Norwegian, when og connects two main clauses (each with its own subject and verb), you normally use a comma before og:
- Jeg har spist for mye kake, og magen er helt full.
- Clause 1: Jeg har spist for mye kake.
- Clause 2: Magen er helt full.
If og connects just two words or phrases (not full clauses), there is no comma:
- Jeg liker kake og is. – I like cake and ice cream.
So the comma is there because you have two complete sentences joined together.
Yes, that is grammatical, but the meaning shifts more clearly to the past.
- Jeg har spist for mye kake, og magen er helt full. – I have eaten too much cake, and my stomach is (now) completely full.
- Jeg spiste for mye kake, og magen var helt full. – I ate too much cake, and my stomach was completely full (at that time in the past).
Use the second version when you are telling a story about something that is over and done with.
Spist is the past participle of å spise (to eat). In Norwegian:
- With har (present perfect) and hadde (past perfect), the participle of most verbs does not change for gender or number:
- Jeg har spist.
- Vi har spist.
- Hun hadde spist.
It stays spist in all those cases. Agreement appears in some other constructions (for example with bli in passive), but not in the har + participle pattern used here.
No, those word orders are not natural in Norwegian.
The normal placement is:
- Jeg har spist for mye kake.
Other placements sound wrong or very strange:
- ✗ Jeg har for mye spist kake.
- ✗ Jeg har spist kake for mye.
In Norwegian, for mye usually comes directly before the noun it quantifies (kake), or before the verb if it is modifying the verb itself (in other contexts).
Yes, Jeg har spist altfor mye kake is correct.
- for mye = too much (more than is good)
- altfor mye = far too much / way too much (stronger, more emotional)
So:
- for mye kake – too much cake
- altfor mye kake – really way too much cake, emphasising that it is much too much.
Norwegian usually uses er (is) with adjectives to describe physical states:
- Jeg er sulten. – I am hungry.
- Hun er trøtt. – She is tired.
- Magen er helt full. – My stomach is completely full.
You could say Magen føles helt full (The stomach feels completely full), but that sounds a bit more descriptive or reflective. The simple and most common way is just er + adjective.
A natural version would be:
- Magen min er veldig full nå fordi jeg har spist for mye kake.
Notes:
- Here magen min explicitly uses min (my) for emphasis; you could also just say Magen er veldig full nå ... in everyday speech.
- veldig means really / very.
- fordi means because.
- nå means now.
There is some variation by dialect, but in many standard/urban varieties:
- jeg is often pronounced like yai (IPA [jæɪ̯] or [jæ]) rather than like English yay or jeg with a hard g.
- har is often reduced a bit, closer to har with a soft r (IPA [hɑːr] or [hɑr]); in rapid speech it can be quite short.
- spist is pronounced roughly speest (IPA [spiːst]) – with:
- sp as in English spy
- a long i (like in English see)
- st at the end pronounced clearly.
So the whole sentence might sound like: yai har spiist fø mye kaake, og maagen er helt full (phonetically approximated).