Laravel localization in Norwegian Norsk

Locale codes

Set the base locale in config/app.php. For regional variants, Norwegian commonly uses: nb_NO, nn_NO

// config/app.php
'locale' => 'no',
'fallback_locale' => 'en',

// Or switch at runtime
App::setLocale('no');

Plural rules: what Norwegian actually needs

CLDR defines 2 cardinal categories for Norwegian. The sample numbers below were computed by ICU for this exact locale:

Laravel's trans_choice() maps numbers to 2 pipe-separated forms for this locale:

// lang/no/messages.php
'items' => ':count item|:count items'

// Usage
trans_choice('messages.items', $count, ['count' => $count]);

Try any number live in the pluralization tester.

Localized dates with Carbon

Real output for Norwegian (nb locale), generated by Carbon for March 21, 2026:

$date = now()->locale('nb');

$date->translatedFormat('l, j F Y');
// "lørdag, 21 mars 2026"

$date->isoFormat('LLLL');
// "lørdag 21. mars 2026 kl. 14:30"

$date->isoFormat('L');
// "21.03.2026"

$date->subDays(3)->diffForHumans();
// "3 måneder siden"

What to watch out for in Norwegian

• Two written standards: Bokmål (nb, the majority form used in most software) and Nynorsk (nn); CLDR and Carbon use nb, not "no".
• Definite article is a suffix (boken = "the book"), so "the {noun}" patterns do not map one-to-one.
• Informal du is standard in modern UI copy.
• Decimal comma with space as thousands separator (1 234,56); dates are written dd.mm.yyyy.

Framework strings already translated

Laravel's own validation, auth and pagination strings are maintained in Norwegian by the open-source Laravel-Lang project (MIT). Install them, then manage your app's own strings live:

composer require laravel-lang/common --dev
php artisan lang:add no
php artisan lang:update