Norwegian/Numbers

The norm in Norwegian is to write numbers from one to twelve using letters and the numbers from 13 and above using numbers. It is recommended not to mix letters and numbers within the same sentence (or even within the same paragraph or the same document), so it would be better to write “from one to fifty cars” or “from 1 to 50 cars” than “from one to 50 cars”. When spelt with letters, they are either spelt in one word (hundreogtrettito) or separately (hundre og tretti to).

The decimal mark in Norwegian is the comma and the thousands separator is a blank space, so 987654 divided by 100 equals 9 876,54. Not all Norwegians follow these rules, so pay attention when a website prompt you for a number as the website will usually tell you what decimal mark to use (or even prompt for the decimals in a separate field).

In Old Norse, numbers one through four were all inflected in three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and four cases (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive). In modern Norwegian, most of the inflection is gone. The official orthography only contains inflected forms of one, but some dialects have kept a larger portion. However, the case inflection is gone everywhere. The early Nynorsk orthography kept the gender inflection of all four numbers, but the forms gradually merged.