Jeg gjør det feil.

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Breakdown of Jeg gjør det feil.

• det: it
• gjøre: to do
• feil: wrong

Questions & Answers about Jeg gjør det feil.

What does each word in Jeg gjør det feil mean, literally?

Word-by-word:

• Jeg – I (subject pronoun)
• gjør – do / am doing (present tense of å gjøre – to do, to make)
• det – it / that (neuter object pronoun)
• feil – wrong / incorrectly (literally wrong, but here it works like in the wrong way)

So a very literal breakdown is: I do it wrong → natural English: I’m doing it wrong.

Why is the word order Jeg gjør det feil and not something like Jeg feil gjør det?

Norwegian has a fairly strict word order:

1. Subject
2. Verb
3. Object(s)
4. Adverbs / manner etc.

So:

• Jeg (subject)
• gjør (verb)
• det (object)
• feil (manner: wrongly / in the wrong way)

You cannot say:

• ✗ Jeg feil gjør det
• ✗ Jeg gjør feil det

Both sound ungrammatical.

You can rephrase with a prepositional phrase if you want to emphasize the way you do it:

• Jeg gjør det på feil måte. – I do it in the wrong way.