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Beginning Norwegian - A Chronicle | ||
Tags: Norwegian | College/University | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| electron44 Newbie United States Joined 5328 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Irish | Message 1 of 15 28 April 2010 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
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So, I've been on the fence for a while now about whether or not I should go to Scandinavia for studies. I'm
currently studying in the US and I'm finding it very, very boring. I have dreams of traveling and living in Europe and being here sort of drains my willpower sometimes. I've decided that I'd like to go to Norway to study at UiO, and for that, I'll need a solid command of Norwegian. I've given myself a year to learn Norwegian and then contemplate making the move to study in Oslo. Hopefully, I will have reached a pretty good level in Norwegian within a year. I plan to study for at least two-three hours every day for said year, meaning I'll have about 730- 1095 hours of Norwegian. This will also be the first foreign language I've ever attempted to learn. I have the following materials: - Teach Yourself Norwegian - Hugo's Norwegian in three months - Linguaphone's Norsk Kurs - Colloquial Norwegian - Norwegian: an essential grammar I'm not sure which of these I want to work out of yet. I like TY Norwegian, Hugo's, and Linguaphone. I don't really have any background in Norwegian and so I plan to start on my studies today. Yesterday, I took a brief glance at the contents of Hugo and found their pronunciation explanations to be WAY overcomplicated with little time to process things. I felt like I really couldn't follow along with the rules they were laying out. Perhaps I should just take some time to try and pick up the pronunciation by committing the dialogues and words to mind without trying to learn independently. Pronunciation is the only aspect of Norwegian that's worrying me. Realistically, I don't need to be perfect at speaking since the most important things I need to learn include comprehending studies taught in norwegian and producing university coursework in Norwegian. I'm slightly worried that I won't be able to learn Norwegian to a high level in order to put complex ideas across accurately. However, I hope that since Norwegian and English are so closely related, I can transfer over some of my writing skills quite easily. Still, it's a scary thought. I've always done well in university because I can comprehend what I read and answer questions and write essays with clarity, easily demonstrating that I know the material. However, I may not have that ease in Norwegian, but I'd still like to shoot for it. I plan to go through TY Norwegian, Linguaphone, and Hugo some more tonight and then catch up on the third episode of Alt for Norge. It's a great show and is mostly in English, so I don't have too much trouble following along. I'm rooting for Grant! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| electron44 Newbie United States Joined 5328 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Irish | Message 2 of 15 28 April 2010 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, as promised, I'm updating this post. I worked for about two hours, covering topics like pronunciation,
indefinite/definite articles/plurals/to have/to be. I'm exhausted! I enjoyed every second of it though. Norwegian seems to me now like a puzzle of English that I must decode into Norwegian. I find it weird that certain sentences sort of sound like English, to the point where I passively understand it without realizing it. It's really encouraging. I won't lie, Norwegian may be one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn and it might be easy now, but I'm sure I'll struggle. Pronunciation seems to be something I just can't get my head around right now and I'm not really sure of how to go about practicing it. I find it a bit sad that I am unable to find more books on Norwegian. I'd love a volume of vocabulary to throw into Anki. I caught up on Alt for Norge. It's a really good show and it shows how Norway might seem to someone who was born and raised in America. The nature of the show means that it's primarily in English, but getting to see Norway and hear bits of Norwegian here and there can still be encouraging. On the plus side, it's entertaining and provides a good use of my time in between studying. The next episode comes on tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it. I really need to find a source for norwegian news, both video and textual, preferably business related as that's what my degree is probably going to be in. I plan to keep working like this for now. I hope I can reach my goal of proficiency in Norwegian somewhere in the timeframe of 6-12 months. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6082 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 15 28 April 2010 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck with the Norwegian! I'm more than happy to help out with spellchecking etc once
you get going, just let me know! :) For economy/business news check E24. For "normal" news I prefer Dagbladet. I'm not quite sure about video news, you could check if NRK's "NettTV" works outside Norway but I think to a large extent it doesn't. That's the state owned network by the way. Good luck/lykke til! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| electron44 Newbie United States Joined 5328 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Irish | Message 4 of 15 29 April 2010 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for thelinks. Unfortunately, NRK's content is only available in Norway. I did come across some torrents set up by the government on which popular shows from NRK seem to be seeded. I might check and see if that works for me. Thanks for the offer to help! It's appreciated. I feel I have so much to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5337 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 15 29 April 2010 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome! I live right outside Oslo, and I am also more than willing to help you in any way to acheive your goals. I think you are right in that Norwegian is possibly one of the easiest languages to pick up for someone who has English as his native language.
You will see that our grammar is easy, and the vocabulary will not be difficult to learn. The pronunciation might be a bit tricky, but you'll get there. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| electron44 Newbie United States Joined 5328 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Irish | Message 6 of 15 29 April 2010 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks! I think the hardest thing as of now is pronunciation and lack of materials. (Well, I guess I have a pretty good bit of materials, but there doesn't seem to be many courses past the beginner level.) Oslo is really a beautiful city. All of Norway is stunning! I find the grammar pretty easy so far, especially in regard to verbs. I feel vocabulary is going to be my weak point since I haven't really stumbled across any Norwegian vocabulary books. I also can't find a decent Norwegian <-> English printed dictionary. Vocabulary is easy to memorize as a lot of it is reminiscent of English building blocks. Many large words seem to actually be a collection of small words, which makes for quite a good vocabulary tool. Right now, the only exposure to listening I have is Alt for Norge (love it!) and some shows from NRK. I'm fond of Tekno, it's an interesting show. My biggest worry is that I won't be able to reach a high enough level in a year to pass the proficiency test at the advanced level, but hopefully, I'll reach it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| electron44 Newbie United States Joined 5328 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Irish | Message 7 of 15 30 April 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Yesterday I continued on with chapter one of TY Norwegian and did some work with Linguaphone and had a look through my grammar book. I'm a bit disappointed because alt for norge got pushed to next week due to the finale for 4-stjerners middag taking up the slot. Oh well, I guess it's just more motivation to learn as much as possible before next thursday!
I wanted to buy Harry Potter og de vises sten, but the price came up to something like 85 USD for just one book and shipping. In the meantime, I also found a bunch of shows on TV3 that I can watch from the US. I really like svinesund and luksusfellen. I can't understand much, but I still enjoy the idea of the shows and can't wait until I reach the point where I can actually understand. All in all, everything's going good. I wish I had access to some books for collection so that I can start practicing reading in the coming months. I might break down and spend the 85 dollars for Harry Potter og de Vises Sten, but I might die a little inside spending that much! I am still having trouble with pronunciation. The long and short vowel rules are a bit hard for me to grasp and of course there's the infamous å, æ, and ø! Basically, all the vowels are giving me a bit of a problem. I'm not really sure how to rectify that issue, so I hope it'll come with time. I have some plans to start supplementing this blog with (almost) daily youtube vlogs about my progress in Norwegian. I think it'll be an interesting way to watch myself improve. I've not thought up the specifics yet, but I'll put the channel here when I do, for those who may be interested. I'm still going to write in the thread as well because I believe it's important to summarize your progress in as many ways as possible. I really wish I could take a vacation to Norway. I have some friends who live in Trondheim that would let me stay with them, but the round trip ticket from the US to Norway costs about 3,000-4,000 dollars. As a student, I don't have that sort of money. For now, I will see Norway through the prism of books and television and bide my time, learning and waiting for the chance to go there and use what I've learned. Edited by electron44 on 30 April 2010 at 6:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5337 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 15 01 May 2010 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck, you see very motivated. Are you studying Norwegian at the University, or is it just a hobby?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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