Breakdown of Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg.
Questions & Answers about Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg.
In Norwegian, when you have an embedded question (a question inside another sentence), the word order changes compared to a normal question.
- Direct question: Hva er viktig for deg? – What is important for you?
- Embedded question: Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg. – I don’t know what is important for you.
Key points:
- In direct questions, the verb normally comes right after the question word: Hva er viktig?
- In embedded questions (after verbs like vite, spørre, lure på, si), you do not use question word order. The verb goes after the subject, like in a normal statement.
So you cannot say:
✗ Jeg vet ikke hva er viktig for deg. (incorrect)
You must say:
✓ Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg.
In the phrase hva som er viktig, the som is a kind of link word (a relative marker) that appears when the question word is the subject of the embedded clause.
Compare:
- Hva er viktig? – What is important?
Here, hva is the subject of er.
When you turn this into an embedded question, Norwegian normally does:
- Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig.
Rule of thumb:
If hva / hvem / hvilken etc. is the subject, you usually add som:
- Jeg vet ikke hvem som kommer. – I don’t know who is coming.
- Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig. – I don’t know what is important.
If the question word is not the subject (it’s an object or something else), you don’t add som:
- Hva gjør du? → Jeg vet ikke hva du gjør. (no som)
- Hvem så du? → Jeg vet ikke hvem du så.
So in this sentence, hva is the subject of er, so we need som.
No, that is not natural Norwegian. In this kind of embedded question where hva is the subject, som is required.
Correct:
- Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg.
Incorrect:
- ✗ Jeg vet ikke hva er viktig for deg.
Without som, it sounds like you tried to keep the direct question word order inside the sentence, which Norwegian does not allow here.
In a main clause in Norwegian, the finite verb (here: vet) normally comes in the second position (the V2 rule). The negation ikke usually comes after that verb.
So:
- Jeg vet ikke ...
Subject (Jeg) = first element
Verb (vet) = second element
Negation (ikke) = after the verb
You generally cannot say:
✗ Jeg ikke vet hva som er viktig for deg.
The pattern subject + finite verb + ikke is very strong in standard Norwegian main clauses:
- Jeg forstår ikke. – I don’t understand.
- Han liker ikke kaffe. – He doesn’t like coffee.
- Vi kan ikke komme. – We can’t come.
Both for and til can sometimes translate as for or to, but they’re used differently.
for deg here means for you / for your sake / as far as you are concerned.
viktig for deg = important for you.til deg is more about direction (to you), especially with giving or movement:
- Jeg gir boken til deg. – I give the book to you.
- Jeg skriver til deg. – I write to you.
With adjectives like viktig, you normally use for:
- Det er viktig for meg. – It is important for me.
- Det er vanskelig for ham. – It is difficult for him.
- Det er lett for oss. – It is easy for us.
So viktig for deg is the natural combination here.
Norwegian pronouns, like English ones, have different forms for subject and object.
- Subject form: jeg, du, han, hun, vi, dere, de
- Object form: meg, deg, ham, henne, oss, dere, dem
du is the subject form, used when you are doing the action:
- Du er viktig. – You are important.
- Du vet det. – You know it.
deg is the object form, used when something happens to you, or something is for you:
- Jeg ser deg. – I see you.
- Det er til deg. – It is for you.
- Det er viktig for deg. – It is important for you.
In for deg, the pronoun is the object of the preposition for, so it must be in the object form: deg.
Norwegian adjectives change form depending on gender/number and whether they come before a noun or not.
When an adjective comes before a noun, you usually see endings:
- en viktig sak – a(n) important matter (masc./fem.)
- et viktig spørsmål – an important question (neuter, adds -t)
- viktige saker – important matters (plural, adds -e)
But when the adjective is used after the verb (as a predicative, like after er, blir, føles), it often stays in the base form in Bokmål when referring to something general:
- Det er viktig. – It is important.
- Dette er vanskelig. – This is difficult.
- Det er umulig. – It is impossible.
In hva som er viktig for deg, viktig is used in that predicative position (after er), so it stays in the base form viktig.
That would sound odd or at least much less natural, and it slightly changes the meaning.
Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg.
→ I don’t know what is important to you. (Open question about the content of your priorities.)Jeg vet ikke det som er viktig for deg.
Literally: I don’t know that which is important for you.
This sounds clumsy and more like you are talking about a specific, known “thing” that is important for the other person, rather than asking in general what is important.
For the general meaning I don’t know what is important to you, you should stick to hva som er viktig for deg.
No. In Norwegian, ikke almost never goes at the very end of the sentence like that (except in some dialectal or highly marked speech). That word order would sound very unnatural.
For negating vet, you place ikke right after vet:
- Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg.
If you wanted to negate something else, you would move ikke accordingly, but still not to the very end:
- Jeg vet hva som ikke er viktig for deg. – I know what is not important for you.
- Jeg vet ikke om dette er viktig for deg. – I don’t know if this is important to you.
Yes, adding lenger (any more / anymore) adds an extra nuance of change over time.
Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg.
Neutral: I don’t know what is important to you (in general).Jeg vet ikke hva som er viktig for deg lenger.
Implies that you used to know, but now you no longer know what is important to the other person. It often has an emotional or relational nuance.