Læreren leser kommentarene i kommentarfeltet.

Norwegian shows “the” by adding an ending to the noun instead of putting a separate word before it.

• lærer = teacher (indefinite, “a teacher”)
• en lærer = a teacher
• læreren = the teacher (definite)

In this sentence, we’re talking about a specific teacher, so Norwegian uses the definite form: læreren.

lærer is a masculine noun in Bokmål.

For singular definite forms in Bokmål, the typical endings are:

• Masculine: -en → læreren (the teacher)
• Feminine: -a or -en → jenta / jenten (the girl)
• Neuter: -et → huset (the house)

So læreren uses -en because lærer is masculine.

leser is the present tense of the verb å lese (to read).

Norwegian has one present tense that covers both English:

• “reads” (simple present) and
• “is reading” (present continuous).

So læreren leser can mean both “the teacher reads” and “the teacher is reading”. Context decides which feels more natural in English.

kommentar (comment) is a masculine noun.

Its forms are:

• Singular, indefinite: en kommentar = a comment
• Singular, definite: kommentaren = the comment
• Plural, indefinite: kommentarer = comments
• Plural, definite: kommentarene = the comments

In the sentence, we mean “the comments” (a specific set of comments in that field), so we use the definite plural: kommentarene.

Both i and på can sometimes translate as “in” or “on”, but they’re used differently:

• i usually means “in / inside” something (a room, a text, a field, a box).
• på is often “on / at” (on a surface, at a place, on a website, on TV).

A kommentarfelt (comment field/box) is thought of as something you are inside textually, so Norwegian uses i kommentarfeltet.

You might say:

• i boka = in the book
• i kommentarfeltet = in the comment field
  but
• på TV = on TV
• på skolen = at school

kommentarfeltet is a compound noun:

• kommentar = comment
• felt = field
• kommentarfelt = comment field / comment box
• kommentarfeltet = the comment field

The base noun felt is neuter, so its definite ending is -et:

• et felt = a field
• feltet = the field

When you form the compound kommentarfelt, it keeps the gender of felt (neuter), so its definite form becomes kommentarfeltet.

In i kommentarfeltet, we use the definite form: “in the comment field”, because both speaker and listener typically know which comment field is meant (for example, the one under a specific article or post).

You could say i et kommentarfelt (“in a comment field”) if you were talking more generally or non-specifically, but here the idea is usually a specific, known comment field, so i kommentarfeltet is natural.

Norwegian (like German) normally writes compound nouns as one word:

• hus (house) + nøkkel (key) → husnøkkel (house key)
• sommer (summer) + ferie (holiday) → sommerferie (summer holiday)
• kommentar (comment) + felt (field) → kommentarfelt

Then you add the definite ending to the whole compound:

• kommentarfeltet = the comment field

Writing kommentar feltet would be read as “the field of the comment”, which is wrong here. The hyphen kommentar-feltet is also unusual; the standard spelling is kommentarfeltet.

The normal word order here is:

Subject – Verb – Object – Place
Læreren – leser – kommentarene – i kommentarfeltet

This is the most natural order. You can change the order a bit for emphasis or style, for example:

• Kommentarene i kommentarfeltet leser læreren.
  (More marked; emphasizes the comments.)

However, something like Læreren leser i kommentarfeltet kommentarene sounds unnatural in Norwegian. The direct object (kommentarene) normally comes before the place phrase (i kommentarfeltet) in a sentence like this.

læreren is singular definite (the teacher).

For lærer in Bokmål:

• Singular, indefinite: en lærer = a teacher
• Singular, definite: læreren = the teacher
• Plural, indefinite: lærere = teachers
• Plural, definite: lærerne = the teachers

So, the teachers read the comments in the comment field would be:
Lærerne leser kommentarene i kommentarfeltet.

The letter æ is not exactly like any single English letter, but you can approximate it as the vowel in “cat” or “bat”, just a bit tenser and clearer.

Rough pronunciation (Bokmål, standard-ish):

• læreren ≈ LAIR-uh-ren
  
  • læ like English “la” in “lad”, but a bit more open and front
• leser ≈ LEH-ser (in many accents closer to LEH-sər)

You don’t have to be perfect, but knowing that æ is an “a/e”-type vowel (between the two) helps you get closer.

lese mainly means “to read” in the literal sense (read text, books, comments, etc.).

In some contexts, it can overlap with “study”, for example:

• Hun leser jus. = She studies law.

But in a sentence like Læreren leser kommentarene i kommentarfeltet, it clearly means the teacher is reading the comments, not studying them as a subject.