Recommended resources
The freely available resources this lesson will direct you to.
Hei! Last time, you listened for the short questions a cashier might ask at checkout. Now imagine you are still among the shelves: you know what you want, but you cannot see it. In this lesson, you will ask a staff member where an item is, then pick out the few words in the answer that tell you where to go.
Ask for the item, not a perfect sentence
Suppose you are looking for havregryn (oats). A useful question is:
Unnskyld, hvor finner jeg havregryn?
Excuse me, where can I find oats?
Unnskyld gets someone’s attention; hvor finner jeg …? asks where you can find something. You can keep the question and change only the item: Hvor finner jeg melk? (Where can I find milk?) or Hvor finner jeg kaffe? (Where can I find coffee?).
You may also hear or use Hvor kan jeg finne …? (“Where can I find …?”). Both versions work. Hvor er …? (“Where is …?”) is shorter and especially useful for a place or a store facility: Hvor er kassa? (“Where is the checkout?”). If you are unsure whether the shop stocks an item at all, Har dere havregryn? asks “Do you have oats?”—a slightly different question that may still lead to directions.
The short section “Speak to staff with short questions” in Preply’s Grocery shopping in Norwegian – essential words and phrases puts the item question in its shop context. The same guide’s “Aisles, shelves, and signs” section introduces the words you are likely to hear in the answer.
Grocery shopping in Norwegian – essential words and phrases
Read these two short parts to connect a question you can ask with the features a staff member may point out.
Under “Aisles, shelves, and signs,” read from the store vocabulary, paying particular attention to gang, hylle, and avdeling. Then find “Speak to staff with short questions” and read from the example introduced by the staff question through its advice for when an answer is too fast. Stop before “Pay and leave the store.”
The photograph gives those nouns a concrete setting: an item might be somewhere in this hylle (shelving), while the passage between shelving units is a gang (aisle).
Listen to Norwegian Teacher – Karin’s Norwegian Directions for the sound of the questions and the two turn words. The video also discusses places outside shops; concentrate on the phrases you can reuse indoors.
Norwegian Teacher – Karin says location questions and basic direction words aloud, giving you a chance to connect the written forms with what you may hear.
Watch where is for Hvor er …?, then find an item for Hvor kan jeg finne …?. In left and right, listen particularly for høyre, venstre, til høyre, and til venstre. You can leave the later stairs and street directions for another occasion.
Hear the answer as a location
A staff member need not give you a long route. They might simply say:
I gangen til venstre. — In the aisle on the left.
På hylla til høyre. — On the shelf on the right.
Ved siden av melka. — Next to the milk.
Notice what each phrase identifies. Gang names an aisle, hylle names a shelf, and avdeling names a department or section. Til venstre and til høyre tell you which side; ved siden av places an item next to something you may already recognize. You do not have to catch every word before acting: gang … venstre may be enough to find the correct aisle, while hylle … høyre narrows down where to look once you are there.
A direction may also tell you to move before you look. The most useful short instructions here are Gå rett fram (“Go straight ahead”), Ta til høyre (“Turn right”), and Ta til venstre (“Turn left”). You may hear rett frem instead of rett fram; both indicate straight ahead. Bak means “behind,” and foran means “in front of.” A visible landmark makes these words much more useful: bak kassa is “behind the checkout,” while ved siden av melka is “next to the milk.”
Preply’s Directions in Norwegian explained – essential phrases and examples presents these movement and position words together. It covers outdoor routes too, but you only need a small subset for a shop.
Directions in Norwegian explained – essential phrases and examples
Read for the words that distinguish a turn from an item’s final position.
In “Direction words for movement and orientation,” find “Left, right, straight, back, up, and down.” Read the direction words, focusing on høyre, venstre, and rett frem. Then, under “Verbs, prepositions, and place words that shape Norwegian directions,” read the beginning of “Go, turn, take, continue, and cross,” from the movement verbs. In “On, in, next to, in front of, behind, and between,” read from the position words. The examples about intersections and longer distances are not needed for this shop visit.
There is a useful distinction between movement and position. Ta til venstre tells you to turn left. I gangen til venstre tells you which aisle contains the item. If you listen for the noun after the direction word, you can often tell whether you are being instructed to move or being told where to search.
Follow a short shop direction
Here is a complete exchange in a fictional shop. Read the staff member’s answer once for its overall meaning, then look at how its parts fit together.
Du: Unnskyld, hvor finner jeg havregryn?
Ansatt: Gå rett fram og ta til venstre ved meieriavdelingen. Havregryn står i hylla til høyre, ved frokostblandingene.
Du: Rett fram, til venstre ved meieriavdelingen, og så i hylla til høyre?
Ansatt: Ja, nettopp.
Du: Takk skal du ha!
The staff member says to go straight ahead, turn left at the dairy section, and look on the shelf to the right, by the breakfast cereals. Ved meieriavdelingen (“at the dairy section”) marks where to turn; ved frokostblandingene (“by the breakfast cereals”) marks where the oats are. Those landmarks prevent venstre and høyre from becoming two disconnected instructions.
The reply from du repeats the route in shorter form. It is a practical way to check that you heard it correctly, not a requirement to recite every word. If you missed just one part, you can ask a narrower question: Var det til venstre ved meieriavdelingen? (“Was it left at the dairy section?”). If the whole answer was too fast, Unnskyld, kan du si det en gang til? (“Sorry, can you say that once more?”) keeps the conversation moving in Norwegian.
For a brief spoken rehearsal, say the shopper’s first question aloud with havregryn, then replace it with an item you actually buy. Read the staff member’s answer aloud and pause after the turn at the dairy section. That pause helps you keep the movement instruction separate from the final shelf location.
Take this into the shop
To find an item, start with Unnskyld, hvor finner jeg …? In the reply, listen first for gang, hylle, or avdeling, then for høyre, venstre, a movement instruction, or a nearby landmark. If a turn is unclear, repeat that part back as a question rather than guessing.
Next lesson, the shopping conversation becomes less predictable: you will describe a problem with a product and ask about an exchange or refund.