Danish to Norwegian Bokmål: ownership can move behind the noun
A familiar possessive can appear in an unfamiliar position
Danish min, mit, and mine change with the gender and number of the possessed noun. Norwegian Bokmål also makes agreement distinctions, but a common target arrangement places the possessive after the noun. NTNU’s Norwegian course contrasts faren min with min far, both meaning “my father.” A Danish reader should therefore not interpret the later possessive as a correction, an extra person, or a separate sentence fragment.
The noun form changes along with that arrangement. NTNU explains that the noun is definite when the possessive follows it, but indefinite when the possessive precedes it. Consequently, a Danish phrase meaning “my house” cannot be translated by moving only the ownership word while ignoring the noun. In a Norwegian possessive phrase, the definite noun ending does not introduce a second owner or turn “my” into “theirs.” It participates in the target expression of possession.
Danish common gender does not erase Norwegian feminine choices
The course illustrates the feminine option with mora mi, meaning “my mother,” alongside a masculine and a neuter pattern. Danish’s common-versus-neuter distinction does not by itself decide which Norwegian noun form and agreeing possessive a translation should select. The target noun phrase has to be internally consistent. Seeing mi in Norwegian is not evidence that the person speaking is female: the agreement concerns the possessed noun, not the speaker’s sex.
This is particularly relevant to a Danish family introduction containing several ownership phrases. “My mother works here; my house is nearby” mentions the same owner twice, but the Norwegian possessives need not look identical. Conversely, a change in an agreeing possessive should not be taken as a switch from one family member’s belongings to another’s. The target ending is grammatical information about what is possessed, while the person remains the same.
Find the owner before choosing the spelling
Danish distinguishes hans and hendes from the subject-referring sin, sit, and sine. The Danish Language Council’s discussion emphasizes that sin refers back to the sentence’s subject. Thus a Danish report about someone taking their own book already contains ownership information that a translator must retain. A Norwegian result with a smooth noun-plus-possessive order is still wrong if it gives that book to another participant.
NTNU lists Norwegian hans, hennes, and deres as invariable, unlike agreeing min, din, and vår. Its examples also show deres used for both plural addressees and third-person plural owners. In a Danish message addressing several people, source jeres identifies an addressee group; Danish deres instead points to a third-person group. The Norwegian form alone may not visibly reproduce that lexical distinction. Keep the surrounding sentence that establishes whether the writer is speaking to the owners or about them. This is an actual source contrast that cannot be resolved merely by checking whether the Norwegian noun is definite or whether its possessive stands before or after it.
Language references