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Best Sources to Learn Norwegian

 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
30 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4  Next >>
ericblair
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4710 days ago

480 posts - 700 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 1 of 30
12 July 2012 at 9:04am | IP Logged 
Hello all,
What are the best courses/sources for learning Norwegian for an English speaker? Thanks!
Paying for courses is fine (meaning they don't just need to be random phrase sites or
whatever).
2 persons have voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
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2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 2 of 30
12 July 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged 
Scandinavian and Nordic Resources was a recent HTLAL thread. It ran for 11 pages. Perhaps there's something useful there.

Edited by iguanamon on 12 July 2012 at 10:40pm

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ericblair
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4710 days ago

480 posts - 700 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 3 of 30
13 July 2012 at 6:05pm | IP Logged 
No, not really. I read through that all before making this. Having a list of sources
doesn't help much in knowing which are effective and worth the time. For example, I see
New French With Ease from Assimil praised very highly by most that have used it, yet the
Arabic Assimil course is seen as a dismal failure. Thus, simply knowing both exist for
Assimil doesn't help know if I should use them :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
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Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5333 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 4 of 30
13 July 2012 at 7:18pm | IP Logged 
I wish I could help you, but naturally, since I am a native Norwegian speaker, I have never used any study material for Norwegian. If you have any questions you would like to have answered by a native speaker, I am however all yours :-)
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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4827 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 5 of 30
14 July 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged 
Well the TYS is probably a reasonable start, and not too expensive.

I got it about a year before a planned visit to Norway. Unfortunately, that doesn't
represent a year's study! I had quite a few distractions, and did not give it the
attention it deserved. I quite liked it though. FWIW, although I could not understand
much of what people said in Norway, I could read a reasonable amount of a popular
newspaper, with the help of the vocab in my book, and a little help from German,
English, and loan words.

If I were doing it again though, I would try to make sure I got a lot more listening
practice from other sources, e.g. podcsts, in addition to what's on the TYS CDs.





I've had a bit better success with TYS Danish, as I resolved to apply myself better,
and I've been more active in seeking out other sources as well.


2 persons have voted this message useful



daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4520 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 6 of 30
15 July 2012 at 2:45pm | IP Logged 
if you don't mind learning in a monolingual environment:
textbook: På vei - you need the textbook, the student's audo-cd and the Norwegian-English wordlist
grammar exercises: Arbeidsbok til håndbok i grammatikk og språkbruk; norsk for innvandrere - løp A
grammar book: you might also want to get some student's grammar written in English - I don't know what's available

It depends on you whether you can handle a course without English instructions. Norwegian is easy enough (grammar wise) to be doable this way.
Even if you choose to get a course instructed in English, you might want to consider using "På vei" for texts and dialogues - they just seem better to me than the texts in any other textbook I've seen.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5165 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 7 of 30
16 July 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged 
Hugo's Norwegian In Three Months is one of the best courses for a fresh start. It has longer, more useful dialogues, which is appropriate for a language close to English. I favor it over TYS, but the old TY's from the 40's and the 60's really rock at teaching grammar. I haven't tried monolingual textbooks like På Vei when I was still a beginner, though I've had a look at Ny i Norge and it seems quite ok and not that hard to follow.

Regarding grammar, both Norwegian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar and Norwegian: An Essential Grammar are great to be kept offhand for looking up explanations with sentences from which you could earn even more vocabulary.

I don't really recommend Colloquial when you have the options above, it's a dry book. It was my first imported language book, I studied through it and kept wondering why my Norwegian wouldn't improve, only to realize it was rather the lack of content of this book. It's no more than an enhanced phrasebook with some gadgets as crosswords, weather charts etc.

After Hugo's you could try Assimil which is more comprehensive. If you don't have Assimil or can't read French, you could always proceed to Linguaphone which is very extensive, but this after completing Hugo or TY so you can follow explanations in Norwegian with no need to resort to the translations supplement all the time.
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Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4667 days ago

1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 8 of 30
16 July 2012 at 6:51pm | IP Logged 
Get PIMSLEUR Norwegian! Listen and repeat approach is the best for Norwegian, since most people can master the Norwegian written language and grammar with no problems, but have troubles with pronunciation, intonation, tones...and with spoken Norwegian in general... Make sure you get the pronunciation, the intonation and the tones right, otherwise, you will sound very foreign.

If you opt for a two gender system, make sure you pronounce the R in the French way, so you can sound more authentic (Bokmaal in a Bergensk way, also know as penbergensk).

I studied Norwegian ON and OFF...I give it a pause, since I haven't chosen which dialect to follow. I started with a penbergensk, but now I find stavangerske more beautiful:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz_ugZNVo-8


Most Norwegian courses are very boring, unfortunately.
Make sure you get the basics of grammar first, so you can venture into discovering the language on your own...in small articles from papers like Dagbladet, listening to reportages on NRK and TV2 and so on...Get a good dictionary, it's essential from the very start. Lykke til!

Edited by Medulin on 16 July 2012 at 7:24pm



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