The 1,000 Most Common Norwegian Words

Ranked by real-world frequency. Study all of them free with spaced repetition.

More Norwegian lists: Nouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs About learning Norwegian

The 1,000 Most Common Norwegian Words: the list

Tips for learning Norwegian words

• Learn irregular verbs such as være (to be), ha (to have), gjøre (to do) and vite (to know) as fixed units, since their present-tense forms (er, har, gjør, vet) don't follow the regular -er pattern and come up constantly.
• Group the short function words together (ikke, igjen, hvor, hvorfor, hvordan, opp, ut, her) and drill them separately from content words — they blur together easily, but they carry the structure of the sentence.
• Practise near-synonyms in short phrases rather than in isolation: si (to say) and snakke (to talk) both concern speaking, but they are not interchangeable.
• When you meet a noun such as dag (day), learn its gender at the same time as the word itself, since gender is not reliably predictable from spelling and is easy to guess wrong later.
• Test yourself by typing the Norwegian word from the English prompt instead of just recognising it — production is harder than recognition and exposes half-known words fast.
• Practise ville (to want) in full sentences: as a modal it is followed by a bare infinitive, whereas trenge (to need) normally links to an infinitive with å.