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Best Sources to Learn Norwegian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4526 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 9 of 30 16 July 2012 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
I would advise against Assimil. Very inconsistent use of feminine gender. Why can't they just always use feminine gender whenever possible and explain once that you can always substitute masculine for feminine gender? Annoying. I've also spotted some annoying mistakes in Assimil Norwegian. But then, you'll find mistakes in almost any book. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 30 16 July 2012 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Inconsistent feminine gender sounds just right. I decide whether to use feminine or masculine gender
according to mood, who I talk to, how tired I am etc. In short: consistently inconsistent :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4526 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 11 of 30 16 July 2012 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sure, but inconsistency doesn't get along very well with the Assimil method. In the end, you get all confused if a word can be feminine or not and end up using masculine only. How should you assimilate the usage of a word if it changes all the time?
Norwegian has quite a lot of freedom of choice and that's nice and also quite helpful for foreigners once they use the language as your "mistakes" might actually be just another correct form. But as for the learning process I'd say: pick one form and stick to it. Worry about choices later. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 30 16 July 2012 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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The thing is that if learners learn to use the feminine form all the time they will sound off - or politically more
to the left than they may be comfortable with. Even socialist politicians rarely use the feminine form consistently, unless they have a past working in a ship yard, or come from a privileged background trying to pretend they have proletariat roots. And I doubt that there is any language which does not "get along" with the Assimil method. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4526 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 13 of 30 16 July 2012 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I can only write from my own experience.
Whenever my course book gave me a choice, I chose to learn the word as a feminine one (I doubt that all possible feminine words were marked as ei/en, but maybe that was even the case). Still, there are only few words I can recall as a feminine one for sure. Frequent exposure to books (which usually favor the masculine form) kind of overwrote the mental gender marker. But I would like to be able to decide for myself if I can use feminine or masculine form (as you do). If only I knew by heart which words can be feminine and which cannot. (learning Danish makes the matter even worse...but that's a different topic) To sum up, I'm just regretful I don't have as much inside into the Norwegian language as I'd like to have and I think having exposure to material with more consistent usage would have helped. But maybe that's just me. out of curiosity: Is this sounding off by using the feminine form just an Oslo thing or is it the same in other parts of the country? I was given the impression that people would use the feminine form extensively in their dialects in other parts of the country. I didn't get out of Oslo very often, so I couldn't check for myself... Edited by daegga on 16 July 2012 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 30 17 July 2012 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I am afraid I do not really have enough exposure to other dialects to say. The Bergen dialect does not have
the feminine form at all. If I were to make an educated guess, I would imagine that it would be more common in the dialect of Oslo East and in dialects close to nynorsk. I think it is also quite common in some of the dialects North of Oslo. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5423 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 15 of 30 17 July 2012 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Grammar wise, get "Norwegian: An Essential Grammar" by Åse-Berit and Rolf Strandskogen, very thorough but not a headache to read. Avoid "Norwegian Verbs and Essentials of Grammar" by Louis Janus. He's not native and evidently never got any natives to edit or supervise the creation of the grammar book. The amount of mistakes, typos and things which are simply wrong really drags it down. It has a nice style and explains some things very well, but all the mistakes detract from what could have been a great book. Why a new corrected edition hasn't been released I can't comprehend.
The more recent Teach Yourself books from are pretty decent but their claims on the packaging of achieving B2 level is definitely an exaggeration. Colloquial Norwegian is a bit more thorough but features a little more formal and to some ears, slightly more old fashioned language. I think the best textbook I've seen which has an English base is "Learn Norwegian" by Sverre Klouman. It is very thorough but extremely well explained and features a fair bit of colloquial language too, mainly from around the Oslo area. It also later teaches in Norwegian when things get more advanced. It can get a bit heavy going at times though but it is a great book if you want a very rich resource in one book. It is out of print but can be found fairly cheaply on abebooks.com/.co.uk. Don't bother tracking down the cassettes though, just send me a PM and I can send you mp3s I made of them. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 17 July 2012 at 11:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5458 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 16 of 30 17 July 2012 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, it is mostly an Oslo thing. In most of the dialects the three gender system is intact, just like in Nynorsk. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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