# Norwegian: Hva koster det å bygge hus?



## DaniESP

Hello, I'm learning norwegian and I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this sentence and its structure.

"Hva" means how many, "koster" is the verb cost, "å bygge" means to build, and what about "det"? What's its function? Shouldn't "hus" be in plural?

Thanks, takk skal du ha.


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## JonTve

Hva translates to What in English so the translation of the sentens would be : What is the cost to build a house.


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## Ben Jamin

Or, literally: "What does it cost to build (a) house", where "det" means "it". By the way, the plural of "hus" is also "hus".


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## DaniESP

Ben Jamin said:


> Or, literally: "What does it cost to build (a) house", where "det" means "it". By the way, the plural of "hus" is also "hus".


Oh, okay, so "det" is a structure thing? Then I guess this kind of sentence always is followed by det or den? 
Thank you!


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## Ben Jamin

DaniESP said:


> Oh, okay, so "det" is a structure thing? Then I guess this kind of sentence always is followed by det or den?
> Thank you!


"Det" is a part of the compund sentence _subject _which is "det å bygge hus".


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## Dan2

DaniESP said:


> "Hva" means how many


As JonTve said it means "what".  But in English, and we see here in Norwegian, in connection with the verb _cost/koste_, it can be interpreted as "how _much_".


DaniESP said:


> what about "det"? What's its function?


Since your English seems quite good, compare to English "What does *it *cost to build a house?".  We like to have an explicit subject pronoun, even if it doesn't carry much meaning.


DaniESP said:


> Shouldn't "hus" be in plural?


"hus" is also plural, as Ben Jamin said.  One-syllable neuter nouns tend to remain unchanged in the plural.

Now I have a question: Do we know for certain that "*a *house" is meant?  For ex., if I visited Norway I might want to ask the general question, "What does it cost to build houses here?"


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## raumar

I agree with the others: this means "*a* house". Let us replace "hus" with "hytte" (so that the singular and plural forms are different), and see what happens:

_Hva koster det å bygge hytte?  - _This works well as a general question.
_Hva koster det å bygge ei hytte?  _- This would also be correct, and the meaning is almost the same. But it looks a bit more specific, and could be used in a conversation about a specific type of cabin, for example.
_Hva koster det å bygge hytter? _- Well, I suppose it is possible to say this as well. But because of the plural, I would rather interpret this as "What does it cost to build several cabins?" (and that would be a strange question to ask).

I am not quite sure how to explain this, but I think we can say that "_å bygge hytte_" refers to the general concept of "building a cabin".



Ben Jamin said:


> "Det" is a part of the compund sentence _subject _which is "det å bygge hus".



I am not so sure about this. If this is parallel to the English "What does it cost to build a house?", I suppose that "it/det" and ""to build a house/å bygge hus" are separate parts of the sentence structure. But I don't know much about grammar - maybe somebody can explain this?


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## Svenke

The most probable reading of
_Hva koster det å bygge hus_
has _det _as a formal subject and _å bygge hus_ as a potential subject (to use translations of the terms of the Norwegian reference grammar),
'What does it cost to build a house?'.
In this case, _det _is unstressed, and it does not go together with _å bygge hus_.

It is also possible to give the sentence another reading, where _det å bygge hus_ is one sentence part. In this case, det is stressed, and the sentence is more naturally translated as
'What does building a house cost?'. In this sentence, _det å bygge hus_ is the only subject.
_det å bygge hus_ is literally 'that to build house', or more explicitly 'the process (etc.) of building a house.

So Raumar's reading is most likely, but Ben Jamin's is also possible.

Svenke


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## raumar

Thanks, Svenke. That makes sense!


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