Breakdown of Vårt hus er størst i nabolaget.
Questions & Answers about Vårt hus er størst i nabolaget.
In Norwegian, the possessive pronoun vår (“our”) changes form depending on the gender and number of the noun it describes:
- vår – with masculine and feminine singular nouns
- vår bil = our car (masc.)
- vår bok = our book (fem.)
- vårt – with neuter singular nouns
- vårt hus = our house (neuter)
- våre – with plural nouns (all genders)
- våre hus = our houses
- våre biler = our cars
The noun hus is a neuter noun (et hus), so you must use vårt: vårt hus.
Vår hus would be wrong, and våre hus would mean “our houses” (plural).
Yes, you can say:
- Vårt hus er størst i nabolaget.
- Huset vårt er størst i nabolaget.
Both are grammatically correct and mean the same thing.
The difference is style and emphasis:
Vårt hus … (possessive before the noun)
Sounds a bit more formal, written, or emphatic. You’re slightly highlighting vårt (“our”).Huset vårt … (possessive after the noun)
This is more common in everyday spoken Norwegian and feels more neutral and natural in many contexts.
So in normal conversation, Huset vårt er størst i nabolaget would be very typical, but your original sentence is also perfectly fine.
Norwegian usually does not use a separate word for “the”. Instead, it adds a suffix to the noun:
- hus = house
- huset = the house
- nabolag = neighborhood
- nabolaget = the neighborhood
In your sentence:
vårt hus – “our house”
Here, the possessive vårt (our) already makes the reference specific, so hus stays in the indefinite form (no “the-suffix”).i nabolaget – “in the neighborhood”
Here you need a specific neighborhood in mind, so nabolaget is in the definite form with the -et ending.
So “the” is expressed inside the word nabolaget, not as a separate word.
Both størst and største are superlative forms of stor (“big, large”), but they are used in different positions:
størst = predicative superlative (after “to be”)
- Huset er størst. – The house is (the) biggest.
- Vårt hus er størst i nabolaget.
største = attributive superlative (directly before a noun, often with “the”)
- det største huset – the biggest house
- Det største huset i nabolaget er vårt. – The biggest house in the neighborhood is ours.
In your sentence, størst comes after the verb er (“is”), describing the subject, so the short form størst is the correct one.
The adjective stor (“big”) is irregular and changes like this:
- Positive: stor – big
- Comparative: større – bigger
- Superlative: størst – biggest
Examples:
- Huset vårt er stort. – Our house is big.
- Huset vårt er større enn huset deres. – Our house is bigger than their house.
- Huset vårt er størst i nabolaget. – Our house is the biggest in the neighborhood.
When størst comes before a noun in a “the biggest X” phrase, you usually add -e:
- det største huset – the biggest house
Yes, you can say:
- Vårt hus er størst i nabolaget.
- Vårt hus er det største i nabolaget.
Both are correct and very close in meaning.
Nuance:
er størst i nabolaget
Focuses more on the quality “is biggest (of all the houses).” It’s a bit more general and is the most straightforward way to say it.er det største i nabolaget
Grammatically this is like “is the biggest one in the neighborhood.”- det is a neuter “the”, and
- største is the attributive superlative form.
You are implicitly saying “the biggest (house / building / one).”
Both versions are natural; the difference is subtle. In everyday speech, er størst i nabolaget is very common and slightly simpler.
In Norwegian, i is the usual preposition for being inside or within an area, neighborhood, town, etc.:
- i nabolaget – in the neighborhood
- i byen – in the city
- i huset – in the house
på is used for many other kinds of locations (islands, surfaces, some institutions, etc.), for example:
- på bordet – on the table
- på skolen – at school
- på jobben – at work
A neighborhood is understood as an area you are in, so i nabolaget is the natural choice.
For a neutral statement, the basic word order is:
Subject – Verb – Predicative – (Other information)
Vårt hus – er – størst – i nabolaget
You normally keep er (the verb) in the second position, and the descriptive part (størst i nabolaget) after it.
You can move some elements for emphasis, but then you have to respect Norwegian word-order rules. For example:
- I nabolaget er vårt hus størst.
“In the neighborhood, our house is the biggest.” (emphasis on in the neighborhood)
The original order is the most neutral and natural for this sentence.
Approximate pronunciation (Bokmål, standard-ish):
- Vårt – like English vort with a long “o” (close to vort in “vortex” but longer)
- hus – like English hoos (similar to “hoose”)
- er – like air but shorter and more closed, closer to “ehr”
- størst – stør- has the vowel /ø/, like the u in French bleu or German schön; final -st is pronounced; roughly “stuhrsht”
- i – like English ee
- nabolaget – roughly “NAH-boh-lah-get”, with:
- na as in “nah”
- bo as in “boat” (without the t)
- la as in “last” (short)
- get with a soft g and a schwa at the end: “geh-tuh”
Very rough full-sentence guide:
[vårt hoos ehr størsht ee NAH-boh-lah-geht]
This comes from two different rules:
Possessive + noun (like “our house”)
When the possessive comes before the noun, Norwegian usually keeps the noun in the indefinite form:- vårt hus – our house
- min bil – my car
- deres venn – their friend
So hus stays indefinite because vårt (“our”) already makes it specific.
A specific known place (like “the neighborhood”)
When you refer to a specific, known area, you use the definite form:- i nabolaget – in the neighborhood
- i byen – in the city
- på skolen – at the school
So you end up with:
- vårt hus – “our house” (indefinite form with a possessive)
- i nabolaget – “in the neighborhood” (definite form to show it’s a particular neighborhood)