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Norwegian: Most Difficult Language? | ||
Tags: Norwegian | Difficulty | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5418 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 1 of 36 27 June 2013 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all.
Found this dubious article that I thought might give some of you a laugh: Silly Article I think the title is more of a journalistic addition, however, the subject of the article, a Russian Language Professor, stipulates that the Norwegian language is one of the most difficult languages in the world to speak well. No elaborations were made to clarify what he means by this so it may be taken out of context. He does mention that it is seemingly impossible for foreigners to learn to use the correct pitch accent/tonelag. His speculations don't hold up too well. First of all, when learning a language absolute perfection is usually not on the agenda. The grammar is simple and easy to get to grips with and people can achieve reasonable conversational levels in far less time than for most other languages, providing you already speak English or another Germanic tongue. People can communicate fine without resorting to possibly many hours of toil over a relative triviality. The pitch accent is not vitally important for understanding, so many people simply don't get round to learning it. I have to wonder as to his research on the matter or are his findings somewhat driven by the fact that after decades of study, he can't accurately replicate it personally? People learn Mandarin and other tonal languages all the time, even those from a non-tonal language background. If people can associate a tone with words in fully tonal languages and learn them, why not with Norwegian? My guess is that there are few materials on the subject largely because it isn't vital for learners. I am sure a well structured course which clearly explains and demonstrates the tones with plenty of audio to shadow could allow people to internalise the pitch accent. Close attention when shadowing audiobooks would likely be a good alternative also, but best to know what the two tones are first. Any thoughts? Edited by Fasulye on 06 July 2013 at 7:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4639 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 2 of 36 27 June 2013 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know if it is sloppy journalism or if this professor is frustrated because he cannot speak Norwegian as well as he would have wished. In any case, when I read the following sentence; " Non-Norwegians will find it nearly impossible, he contends, to speak the language without revealing that they are foreigners", then I think you could say the same for any living language. If your criteria for speaking well is speaking in such a way that the natives will think you are native, then hardly anyone speaks a foreign language well.
Being a native Norwegian I cannot say how difficult it is to learn the language, but from what other people tell me, including here on this forum, I would not think Norwegian is a particularly difficult language. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6678 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 3 of 36 27 June 2013 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Berkov! Our professors refer to his dictionary all the time :D The thing he says about
difficulty has nothing to do with tones, as far as I can see. The tones in Scandinavian languages aren't difficult and they don't touch *that* many words List for Swedish: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_%C3%B6ver_svenska_ordacce ntsskilda_minimala_pa r ...and I guess a Norwegian list would be similar? Perhaps?). It's the melody that trips everyone up. I've been fooled once by a German who had lived in Sweden for 15 or so years; it took me like 5 sentences to understand that he wasn't native, and I remember that 16-language guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=SAtWuQmdexs) whose Swedish I found really, really good. But I can't remember hearing anyone speak Norwegian *that* well that hadn't grown up here (if of foreign origin), except for when I myself didn't know Norwegian very well. On the other hand, I've almost asked a girl from Hammarfest once what country she was from because I thought her accent was peculiar. >_< So glad I decided to shut up that time. So - Norwegian isn't difficult at all to learn how to speak, but probably incredibly difficult to learn to the point where you can fool a native. On the Norwegian TV-series "Dag" there is a Swedish actress who has seemingly mastered the art of speaking Swedish, Danish AND Norwegian separately (she's in movies from all three countries and to me she sounds native in them all), but my boyfriend reacted after one sentence with "WTF, she sounds more Norwegian than me" (i.e. her accent was too perfect and therefore not genuine, which is apparently not good either because they are never satisfied in this country). I do think there are other languages aren't as difficult to learn to that degree, if one really wants to. I don't see why one would bother though, unless you're a spy or something. EDIT: Blah, the link thing refuses to work. Sorry about that. Edited by tricoteuse on 27 June 2013 at 10:20am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4559 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 4 of 36 27 June 2013 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
I've spent a decent chunk of time trying to wrap my head around the finer points of the Swedish pitch accent, and while it's certainly not an easy topic, I do think it's quite learnable, in the end. The challenge, mind you, lies not in remembering which words have which accent, but in actually producing the correct and appropriate intonation patterns. I think you're on the right tracks, though. Reading a systematic (if incomplete) treatment of the pitch accent opened my eyes to many things I had previously missed despite my best attempts to listen for them on my own. You could say that theoretical model gave me the tools I needed to go out there and start figuring out the real thing. A more comprehensive program with drills and carefully chosen examples would no doubt be even more helpful. Since you mentioned shadowing, I feel obligated to point out that I did a lot of blind shadowing in hopes that it would improve my intonation, but had no such luck. My pronunciation did improve, but pitch accent specifically remained a problem. I relied instead on traditional listen-and-repeat, which worked passably well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4559 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 5 of 36 27 June 2013 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||
You've piqued my interest. Is it Tuva Novotny? I seem to recall that one of her parents was from Norway, so that would explain the Norwegian but Danish too? I'm impressed. EDIT: Turns out that "Tuva is the daughter of Czech movie director David Novotny and actress Barbro Hedström." Edited by sans-serif on 27 June 2013 at 10:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6678 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 6 of 36 27 June 2013 at 10:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Yep, sans-serif, that's the one! She's pretty awesome. You can see her on Dag here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WliynaRjGeE And speaking Danish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2m32gm7Lbk Of course, I can't judge anyone's Danish. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5418 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 7 of 36 28 June 2013 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
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@Ogrim: As a language, I think Norwegian is fairly easy to learn from a native English speaker's standpoint, at least the kind of Norwegian spoken in Eastern Norway. It's very simple grammatically like English and shares a good number of cognates with English due to the influx of French words in both countries, not to mention a number of words which are like Anglo-Saxon based English words with some minor changes.
Have to agree with your assessment on the idea that speaking well means being able to pass as a native. It is not something most people strive for in learning a language. Time is better spent learning more words and phrases. I think possibly the trickiest thing with Norwegian though is that the kind of language foreigners tend to learn can mean they will communicate fine with people from Oslo, Fredrikstad etc. but get lost when hearing Rogaland or Hordaland dialects until they spend a lot of time getting used to them. With many places having people from all around Norway, I wouldn't be surprised if foreigners feel they don't have enough consistency of speech patterns around them to truly assimilate. I had this problem at the Folkehøgskole I went to over the past year and though I could understand 80-90% of everything most people said at the end of the year, still couldn't understand one sentence by my friend from Stavanger! @tricoteuse: I agree about the difficulty of learning tones. It is far from impossible, just maybe tricky to interalise into something that comes reflexively. Have to laugh about the actress sounding too Norwegian. I think it is likely a consequence of people trying too hard when mimicking an accent. One has to be relaxed and subtle with it or it just doesn't sound natural, like most attempts at Scottish or English accents by North Americans and vice versa. @sans-serif: When I shadow a text to better learn to mimic pronunciation and accent I usually deal with short loops of about 10-15 seconds long and just keep shadowing a loop many times. I sometimes deconstruct the sound clips into different waves. For a number of loops I focus on listening to the rhythm and stresses and learn to anticipate them in advance. Then in the second wave I focus on just the intonation and hum along to it as if it were a musical melody (though a bad sounding one). After that I just shadow the loop as normal. With other languages I would also spend a few loops focusing on the vowel and consonant sounds but don't need to with Norwegian since I learned the pronunciation as a child. It seems this focusing on individual aspects then putting them together works well. If you are having trouble learning intonation, try working with small loops at a time. It gets more ingrained that way. The brain seems to have an easier time of recognising and assimilating patterns from short repeated examples. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4559 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 8 of 36 28 June 2013 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
I'm glad you brought this up because it's something I've been thinking about lately, inspired by the recently re-emerged shadowing threads. There's still plenty of room for improvement with my pronunciation in general, and my intonation in particular, but all things considered I think I'm doing alright. I've reached a point where I judge it will difficult for me to make much progress without either systematically learning bits of audio by heart or intensive speaking practice, preferably in-country. As it happens, I think the benefits of shadowing short segments can be attributed mostly to the memorization of the material--the method of memorization, I believe, is less important. This is just a pet theory of mine, of course, but I don't think it's all that far-fetched. After all, there's nothing ground-breaking about shadowing--it's essentially just talking over a recording. In any case, you're absolutely right in that I should try shadowing shorter clips as well. It was on my list of things to experiment with at some point, but it's been a while since I got around to pursuing any of those. Subs2srs is another one I've meaning to look into. I think it could be very useful for 'mining' suitable snippets of audio, if nothing else. Edited by sans-serif on 28 June 2013 at 10:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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