Breakdown of Hun bor på en liten hybel, men samboeren hennes bor i et kollektiv.
Questions & Answers about Hun bor på en liten hybel, men samboeren hennes bor i et kollektiv.
Norwegian has two common verbs that can both translate as to live in English:
- å bo – to live somewhere, to reside (talking about where you live)
- Hun bor i Oslo. – She lives in Oslo.
- å leve – to be alive, to live (as opposed to being dead) or to live one’s life
- Han lever fortsatt. – He is still alive.
- Hun lever et lykkelig liv. – She lives a happy life.
In your sentence, we are talking about where she lives, so bor is the correct verb:
Hun bor på en liten hybel = She lives in a small bedsit/room.
Both på and i can be translated as in, but usage depends on the type of place:
i is used for most enclosed spaces:
- i et hus (in a house)
- i en leilighet (in an apartment)
- i et kollektiv (in a shared apartment)
på is often used with:
- workplaces and institutions: på skolen, på jobben, på universitetet
- some types of housing seen as a “place/arrangement”: på hybel, på internat
- islands, surfaces, etc.
På hybel is a fixed expression in Norwegian; you almost always say bo på hybel.
For kollektiv, Norwegians usually say bo i et kollektiv (treating it like an apartment/house).
A hybel is more specific than “small apartment”:
- Typically a single room or a very small unit, often rented by students or young people.
- It may be:
- part of a larger house (e.g. a basement room with its own entrance), or
- a very small self-contained unit with a tiny kitchenette and bathroom.
It’s closer to:
- bedsit, room, dorm room, or studio than a regular “apartment”.
A normal small apartment is usually called en liten leilighet, not en liten hybel.
samboeren hennes breaks down like this:
- samboer – a person you live with in a romantic relationship (cohabiting partner)
- samboer
- -en → samboeren = the cohabiting partner
- hennes = her
So literally: the cohabiting partner of her → her partner (that she lives with).
In Norwegian, when you use hans / hennes / deres (his / her / their), the possessed noun normally stays in the definite form:
- samboeren hennes – her partner
- vennene hans – his friends
- leiligheten deres – their apartment
Both are grammatically correct, but they sound different:
- samboeren hennes – the neutral, most common way to say her partner.
- hennes samboer – can sound a bit more emphatic or contrastive, like her partner (as opposed to someone else’s), or more formal/written.
In everyday speech, you’ll usually hear:
- samboeren hennes,
not hennes samboer.
Norwegian has two types of “her/his/their”:
sin / si / sitt / sine (reflexive possessive) – used when the owner is the subject of the clause:
- Hun bor med samboeren sin.
= She lives with her own partner.
- Hun bor med samboeren sin.
hans / hennes / deres – used when the owner is someone else, or when you want to avoid ambiguity:
- Hun bor med samboeren hennes.
= She lives with her partner (normally interpreted as some other woman’s partner).
- Hun bor med samboeren hennes.
In your sentence:
- Hun bor på en liten hybel, men samboeren hennes bor i et kollektiv.
The subject of the second clause is samboeren, not hun, so sin would not work there. We must use hennes:
- … men samboeren hennes bor i et kollektiv.
= but her partner lives in a shared apartment.
In Norwegian, men is a coordinating conjunction meaning but.
The rule: when men connects two main clauses (each with its own subject and verb), you put a comma before it.
Your sentence has two main clauses:
Hun bor på en liten hybel
- subject: Hun
- verb: bor
(samboeren hennes) bor i et kollektiv
- subject: samboeren hennes (understood from context)
- verb: bor
So you write:
- Hun bor på en liten hybel, men samboeren hennes bor i et kollektiv.
Norwegian nouns have grammatical gender:
- en = common gender (often called “masculine/feminine”)
- et = neuter gender
You simply have to learn the gender of each noun:
- en hybel (common gender) → en liten hybel
- et kollektiv (neuter) → et kollektiv
The adjective liten also has gender forms:
- en liten hybel (common)
- et lite kollektiv (if you added an adjective: a small shared apartment)
Here, there’s no adjective before kollektiv, so you don’t see the change.
In Norwegian, most descriptive adjectives come before the noun:
- en liten hybel – a small bedsit
- et stort hus – a big house
- en hyggelig samboer – a nice partner
There are some fixed expressions and special cases with adjectives after the noun, but the standard pattern is:
article + adjective + noun
→ en liten hybel, et gammelt kollektiv, etc.
So hybel liten would be wrong.
Norwegian has no verb conjugation for person or number in the present tense.
The present tense of å bo is bor, no matter who the subject is:
- Jeg bor
- Du bor
- Han/hun bor
- Vi bor
- Dere bor
- De bor
So the same form bor is used in both parts of the sentence.
In everyday Norwegian, et kollektiv usually means:
- a shared apartment/house where several people (often students or young adults) live together and share common areas like kitchen and living room.
It does not automatically imply a political commune. It’s more like:
- shared flat, house share, roommate apartment.
Context can make it more “commune-like”, but by default it’s just shared housing.
Yes, there is a nuance:
Hun bor på en liten hybel
→ She lives in a small bedsit/single room, usually very simple, often student-style accommodation.Hun bor i en liten leilighet
→ She lives in a small apartment, generally more self-contained and “proper” than a hybel (separate rooms, more facilities).
So hybel suggests something smaller and often more basic than leilighet.
Native speakers strongly prefer bo på hybel:
- Hun bor på en liten hybel – natural, idiomatic.
- Hun bor i en liten hybel – grammatically understandable but sounds odd/unnatural to most Norwegians.
På hybel is a fixed collocation, so you should stick to på here.