Learn Hardcore Norwegian: De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum. - They want to get married in a civil ceremony in the city center.

De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum.

They want to get married in a civil ceremony in the city center.

Breakdown of De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum.

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Questions & Answers about De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum.

What exactly does vil mean here? Does it mean want to or future will?

In this sentence vil mainly means want to / would like to:

De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum.
= They want to get married in a civil ceremony in the city centre.

Norwegian vil can express both:

willingness / desire:
Jeg vil spise. = I want to eat.
a kind of future:
Det vil regne i morgen. = It will rain tomorrow.

Here, because marriage is a choice, the meaning is clearly they want to, not just a neutral future.

You could also say De skal gifte seg sivilt i sentrum, which sounds more like They are going to / They are scheduled to get married…, focusing on a plan rather than desire.

Why do we need seg after gifte? Why is it gifte seg instead of just gifte?

Gifte seg is a reflexive verb in Norwegian and means to get married (to marry each other / to marry someone, from the subject’s point of view).

gifte seg = to get married (reflexive)
gifte noen = to marry someone (off), usually done by an official

Examples:

De vil gifte seg. = They want to get married.
Presten gifter paret. = The priest marries the couple.

Without seg, gifte needs a direct object:

De vil gifte barna sine. = They want to marry off their children.

So in your sentence, seg is required.
De vil gifte sivilt i sentrum is ungrammatical.

What is seg exactly, and how would it change with other subjects?

Seg is the third-person reflexive pronoun used with han / hun / hen / den / det / de. It refers back to the subject.

Reflexive pronouns in Norwegian:

jeg → meg
du → deg
han / hun / hen / den / det / de → seg
vi → oss
dere → dere

So:

Jeg vil gifte meg. = I want to get married.
Du vil gifte deg. = You want to get married.
Han vil gifte seg. = He wants to get married.
Vi vil gifte oss. = We want to get married.
De vil gifte seg. = They want to get married.

Notice that seg is used for both singular and plural third person.

Why is it sivilt and not sivil? What form is sivilt?

Sivilt here is an adverb formed from the adjective sivil (civil).

In Norwegian, you often make an adverb from an adjective by using the neuter singular form of the adjective:

rolig (calm) → rolig (calmly)
Han snakker rolig. = He speaks calmly.
rask (quick) → raskt (quickly)
Hun løper raskt. = She runs quickly.
sivil (civil) → sivilt (in a civil way / in a civil ceremony)

So:

et sivilt ekteskap = a civil marriage (adjective)
gifte seg sivilt = get married in a civil way / have a civil wedding (adverb)

Using sivil directly here (gifte seg sivil) would be wrong. You need the adverb sivilt.

What is the nuance of sivilt here? Does it specifically mean a civil ceremony (non-religious)?

Yes. In this context sivilt normally means in a civil ceremony, i.e.:

Not in a church or religious ceremony
Usually at the town hall or another public office
Performed by a civil authority (e.g. a registrar, mayor, or other official)

Norwegian also has borgerlig with a similar meaning:

borgerlig vigsel / borgerlig ekteskap = civil wedding / civil marriage

So:

De vil gifte seg sivilt
≈ De vil ha en borgerlig vigsel
= They want a civil wedding (non-religious, official).

Why is the word order gifte seg sivilt and not sivilt gifte seg? Can I move sivilt around?

The natural order here is:

Verb (infinitive): gifte
Reflexive pronoun: seg
Adverb (manner): sivilt

So: gifte seg sivilt

You generally cannot put sivilt in front of gifte seg in this sentence:

De vil sivilt gifte seg i sentrum – sounds unnatural/wrong.
De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum – natural.

In Norwegian, adverbs of manner (how?) like sivilt, rolig, fort usually come after the verb phrase they describe, not before it.

You can move larger chunks, though:

I sentrum vil de gifte seg sivilt. (place first, then verb-second rule)

But inside the verb phrase, gifte seg sivilt is the normal order.

Why is it i sentrum and not på sentrum? How do I know which preposition to use?

With sentrum (city centre, downtown), the normal fixed expression is i sentrum:

Jeg jobber i sentrum. = I work in the city centre.
De bor i sentrum. = They live in the city centre.
De vil gifte seg i sentrum. = They want to get married in the city centre.

På sentrum is not idiomatic in standard Norwegian for this meaning.

Very roughly:

i is used for being inside areas, cities, rooms, etc.
på is used for surfaces, islands, some institutions, some fixed expressions.

But there are many exceptions and fixed phrases. For sentrum, just memorize i sentrum as the correct form.

Why doesn’t sentrum have an article? Why not i sentrumet?

Sentrum is a noun (neuter), and in theory it could take an article:

et sentrum = a centre
sentrumet = the centre

However, in everyday language sentrum is often used without any article to mean the city centre (of this town) in a generic way, almost like an adverb:

Vi møtes i sentrum. = We will meet in the city centre (here).
Det er dyrt i sentrum. = It’s expensive in the city centre.

I sentrumet is grammatically possible but sounds odd in most contexts; it would suggest some very specific, delimited centre, and is rarely used in this everyday sense. So i sentrum is the normal expression.

Could I say De skal gifte seg sivilt i sentrum instead of De vil…? What is the difference?

Yes, you can:

De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum.
De skal gifte seg sivilt i sentrum.

Both are correct but have different nuances:

vil: emphasizes desire / wish
→ They want to get married in a civil ceremony.
skal: emphasizes plan, arrangement or obligation
→ They are going to / are scheduled to get married in a civil ceremony.

If you are talking about a fixed future plan, skal is very common.
If you are talking more about what they want, vil is the better choice.

Why isn’t there an å before gifte? I thought infinitives usually have å.

Normally, Norwegian infinitives use å:

å spise = to eat
å reise = to travel
å gifte seg = to get married

But after modal verbs, you drop å and use a bare infinitive:

Common modal verbs:

vil (want to / will)
skal (shall / going to)
kan (can)
må (must / have to)
bør (should / ought to)
får (get to / may, in some uses)

So you say:

De vil gifte seg. (not vil å gifte seg)
De skal gifte seg.
De kan gifte seg.
De må gifte seg.

That’s why your sentence has vil gifte, not vil å gifte.

Does de refer to any gender here? Is there any gender information in the sentence?

De is the third-person plural pronoun in Norwegian, meaning they. It does not give any gender information:

It can be a man and a woman, two women, two men, non-binary people, any mix.

Norwegian usually doesn’t mark gender in the plural pronoun de, so from this sentence alone you only know that it is more than one person. You don’t know their genders.

What is the difference between gifte seg and bli gift? Can I say De vil bli gift instead?

Both are possible, but they sound a bit different:

gifte seg = to get married, emphasizes the act/ceremony:
- De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum.
  = They want to have a civil wedding in the city centre.
bli gift = to become married, focuses more on the resulting state (being married) rather than the ceremony itself:
- De vil bli gift.
  = They want to be married / to become married.

De vil bli gift sivilt i sentrum is grammatical, but sounds a bit odd and less idiomatic than De vil gifte seg sivilt i sentrum, because sivilt i sentrum describes the ceremony, and gifte seg is the natural verb for that.