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What’s really hard about Norwegian? | ||
Tags: Norwegian | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 1 of 20 01 August 2011 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey, it's my native language, so I don't mean to bash anyone, but I can't really see what's difficult about Norwegian, or Swedish for that matter. Danish is probably slightly harder. All of these languages have an über easy grammar, compared to, say German or any Romance language.. Some people say it's hard, it's a 'small' language, (simple synthax, few words) it's transparent with others, such as English or German. What's really the trouble?
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| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5130 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 20 01 August 2011 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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As with any language, whether perceived hard or easy, I think it comes down to putting it into practice. We can study, learn and memorize until we're blue in the face, but until we actually have to use the language - not just read it, but produce our own thoughts - all the grammar rules in the world are just rules and haven't had a chance to become second-nature.
I can tell you as a native English speaker, one of the first and easiest things I learned was when to reverse the order of pronoun-verb / verb-pronoun after certain connecting adverbs such as "when", "then", etc. I know the rule well, but still get tripped up by it in speech. And I'm told it's probably the number one giveaway of a foreigner speaking Norwegian. That's just an example, but there are many more examples of things being easy, yet different enough from our own language that it causes trouble. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5529 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 3 of 20 02 August 2011 at 6:31am | IP Logged | ||
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As far as the grammar goes, I'd say the trickiest things are the distinction between sin and hans/hennes and inversion (verb-pronoun as hrhenry mentioned, but verb-adverb in subordinate clauses is even harder...)
There are many aspects of Norwegian grammar that make it more straightforward compared to other European languages, but I think über easy is going a bit too far. There are many things that might be simple for a European, but much more of a challenge for someone whose native language is structured very differently. The distinction between simple past and present perfect (preteritum og perfektum) for example is pretty tricky if you don't already speak a language that has the same system (like English). I'd say one of the main difficulties is the pronunciation - particularly of vowel sounds. One of the things speakers of Norwegian as a second language struggle the most with I think is distinguishing clearly enough between long and short vowels. Long vowels in Norwegian are really long, and most learners clip them, so that distinctions like takk/tak, måtte/måte etc. aren't as clear as they should be. Also, the large variation between dialects makes it harder to attain a good level of listening comprehension compared with most other languages. (Speaking for myself, as someone who's lived in Oslo for several years, I still find Swedish easier to understand than, for example, trøndersk...) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 20 02 August 2011 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegian sounds so cute that I can't concentrate on what's actually being said. (True. I will have to overcome that hurdle once I stop dabbling.)
I can't vouch for this from my own experience, but have read accounts that it is difficult for intermediate learners to engage in Norwegian conversation because many native speakers switch to English instead. That combined with the richness in dialects can make it more difficult than necessary. Norwegian grammar and syntax are relatively easy only when you come from another Germanic language. I only started to realize how difficult German grammar may be for foreigners when I tried to explain to somebody that we have noun agreement in attributive, but not in predicative adjectives. It doesn't make sense, but I'm used to it, so I find it easy to pick up the same feature in other languages with the same distinction, but have to practice hard to learn it by heart in languages that don't. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 5 of 20 02 August 2011 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I actually think you may be right. I've heard that the variations in dialects are the hardest part of Norwegian. To us it's simple, same present, different wrapping, I guess. Regarding the sin and hans/hennes, I think you can say that sin is reciprocal or whatever. When you're mentioning something that belongs to someone, use hans/hennes, when if han/hun is the subject, use sin.. Makes sense?? ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5529 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 6 of 20 02 August 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
In simple sentences like "Ole kysset kjæresten sin/hans." it's fairly straightforward. It gets trickier when the grammatical subject is a phrase and not just a word. For example, in the sentence: Ole snakket med broren sin. you have to use "sin" if it's Ole's brother we're talking about. But in the sentence: Ole og broren hans snakket sammen. we can't say "broren sin", as the subject of the sentence is "Ole og broren hans", not just "Ole". You have to think carefully about what exactly is and is not part of the grammatical subject of this kind of sentence, and most people don't find that easy. An even trickier example is "Ole har flyttet til Trondheim fordi broren hans bor der." versus "Ole har flyttet til Trondheim, og er glad for at han nå bor i samme by som broren sin." I've been studying Norwegian for a long time, and I still have to think carefully about these kinds of sentences. Edited by davidwelsh on 02 August 2011 at 11:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 7 of 20 02 August 2011 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegians also mix up sin and hans/hennes sometimes. I noticed it myself earlier today; I said
something, and immediately realised that I should have used sin and not hennes. As a native speaker I've noticed that foreigners often struggle with verb inversion (the "verb second rule"). Speakers of other Germanic languages (except English) don't have problems with this. The vowels, as already mentioned, are also problematic. The three genders are causing some troubles. Many foreigners seem to struggle with prepositions, and tend to use på as some sort of "universal preposition" for just about anything. Another giveaway seems to be how to express future tense: jeg skal gjøre det, jeg vil gjøre det, jeg kommer til å gjøre det, jeg blir å gjøre det… I'm not sure that they actually use a form that is not grammatically correct (as a native speaker I have never been taught the rules), but it often sounds wrong or unnatural. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| KimG Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 4977 days ago 88 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Portuguese, Swahili | Message 8 of 20 03 August 2011 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I am a Trønder, and my native dialect is partially incomprehensible to some other Norwegians, if they aren't used to it.
On the other hand, I do understand any other norwegian dialect I know of, and including Swedish, and Danish, usually I'd prefer to switch to speaking "bokmål" when I meet danes, rather than using English, but tbh, most danes prefer English, exept Danes who live here... It's something you can get used to. Danes, Swedes and people from Finland do live here in dialect Norway too, and speak their regional languages, I assume a 2. language learner, who's learned Danish or Swedish, could pick up how to understand Norwegian dialects too, from what I have seen. Scandinavian languages are a bit transparent, if the language users want to understand. Edited by KimG on 03 August 2011 at 12:05am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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