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🇬🇧 → 🇳🇴

How easy is Norwegian for English speakers?

Going from English to Norwegian (Norsk) has a composite linguistic distance of 44% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

44% distance FSI Cat I (Easiest) — 600–750 hours
Lexical similarity
45%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance
67%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity
0%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match
100%

Latin → Latin

Genealogical kinship
70%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇬🇧 English
The winter is long and cold but the spring is beautiful.
🇳🇴 Norwegian
Vinteren er lang og kald, men våren er vakker.
🇬🇧 English
She lives in a small house near the river.
🇳🇴 Norwegian
Hun bor i et lite hus nær elven.

Other easy languages for English speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from English:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between English and Norwegian. No signup.