Breakdown of Som pendler fra forstaden er jeg vant til både snøstormer og fulle busser.
Questions & Answers about Som pendler fra forstaden er jeg vant til både snøstormer og fulle busser.
In this sentence, som means “as” and introduces a role or identity:
- Som pendler fra forstaden ≈ As a commuter from the suburb(s)
Functionally, som + noun here describes the perspective or role of the subject (jeg). It’s like saying:
- Som lærer – As a teacher
- Som student – As a student
So som pendler fra forstaden sets the context: in my role as a commuter from the suburb.
In Norwegian, when you talk about someone’s role, job, or general identity after som, you often omit the article:
- Som lærer (not usually som en lærer) – As a teacher
- Som student – As a student
- Som pendler – As a commuter
Using som en pendler is not wrong, but it sounds more specific or emphasized, like as one particular commuter or as a kind of commuter. The neutral, natural phrasing for a general role is som pendler without the article.
Norwegian allows you to move certain elements to the front for emphasis or to set the scene. Here, som pendler fra forstaden is placed first to:
- Highlight the context/role: As a commuter from the suburb…
- Make that information the starting point of the sentence, similar to English.
Both of these are grammatical:
- Som pendler fra forstaden er jeg vant til …
- Jeg er vant til … som pendler fra forstaden.
The meaning is similar; the first simply foregrounds the commuting context.
Norwegian is a V2 language: the finite verb (here er) normally comes in second position in main clauses.
The first “position” in this sentence is the whole fronted phrase:
[Som pendler fra forstaden] – position 1
Then the verb must come next:er – position 2
Then the subject:jeg – position 3
So we get:
- Som pendler fra forstaden er jeg vant til …
If you started with jeg, you would say:
- Jeg er vant til …
The verb is still in second position (after jeg).
In this sentence, pendler is a noun meaning “commuter” – a person who regularly travels between home and work/school.
- en pendler – a commuter
- pendleren – the commuter
- pendlere – commuters
- pendlerne – the commuters
There is also a verb å pendle = to commute, but that is not what we have here. The form pendler can look like a verb (present tense of pendle), but here it clearly functions as a noun after som.
Forstad means “suburb”. Forstaden is the singular definite form:
- en forstad – a suburb
- forstaden – the suburb
In Norwegian, when you mean “from the suburb / from the suburbs (where I live)”, it’s very common to use the definite singular to refer to one’s local area:
- fra byen – from the city (where I live)
- fra landet – from the countryside
- fra forstaden – from the suburb (my suburban area)
Using bare forstad without an article (fra forstad) would be ungrammatical here.
Yes, you could say fra forstedene:
- forstedene = the suburbs (plural definite)
Difference in nuance:
- fra forstaden – from the suburb (seen as one suburban area, typical for me)
- fra forstedene – from the suburbs (emphasizes the plural, like the general suburban region around a city)
Both are grammatically correct; the original leans more toward “my/that suburb” as a single area.
Er vant til is an expression meaning “am used to”.
- å være vant til noe – to be used to something
- Jeg er vant til snøstormer – I am used to snowstorms.
The preposition til is part of this fixed pattern:
- være vant til + noun:
- vant til både snøstormer og fulle busser
- være vant til + å + infinitive:
- vant til å stå i kø – used to standing in line
So til cannot be dropped here; er vant alone would feel incomplete.
You will hear vant med in some dialects and informal speech, but the standard and most widely taught form is:
- være vant til …
So for learners, you should stick to:
- Jeg er vant til både snøstormer og fulle busser.
Using vant med instead of vant til is not recommended in formal or standard written Norwegian.
Både … og … is a correlative pair meaning “both … and …”:
- både snøstormer og fulle busser – both snowstorms and crowded buses
Structure:
- både + item 1 + og + item 2
This pair links two parallel elements of the same type (here, two plural nouns). It emphasizes that both things are included, not just one.
Because the speaker is talking about general repeated experiences:
- snøstormer – snowstorms (plural, indefinite)
- fulle busser – full/crowded buses (plural, indefinite)
In Norwegian, as in English, when you mean in general, over time, you often use the plural:
- Jeg er vant til lange dager. – I am used to long days.
- Hun er vant til høye priser. – She is used to high prices.
Singular forms (en snøstorm, en full buss) would refer to one particular snowstorm or bus, which doesn’t fit the general “used to” idea.
Fulle is the plural form of the adjective full when it describes a plural indefinite noun:
- en full buss – a full bus
- to fulle busser – two full buses
- fulle busser – (some) full buses
Adjective agreement pattern (common-case example):
- Singular indefinite: en full buss
- Singular definite: den fulle bussen
- Plural indefinite: fulle busser
- Plural definite: de fulle bussene
So with busser (plural), the adjective must be fulle.
Yes, you could say som pendler i forstaden, but the nuance changes slightly:
- som pendler fra forstaden – as a commuter from the suburb (you live there and travel out, typically toward the city)
- som pendler i forstaden – as a commuter in the suburb (you commute within the suburban area)
The original fra suggests commuting from that area (often into a city). I focuses more on movement inside that area.