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Learning in Scandinavia | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| arbigelow Tetraglot Groupie Canada Joined 5882 days ago 89 posts - 95 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchC1, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 5 25 March 2009 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
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I've recently been wondering, knowing that English is so widespread there, how easy is it to learn your target language in Scandinavia? Has anyone here had any experiences going to a Scandinavian country to learn the local language? Are people mostly willing to speak to you in the local language even though they might have a better grasp at English than your (scandinavian language)?
I've recently begun Norwegian and am thinking about doing a degree in business at a university in Oslo (taught in English). It would be over a span of 3 years and I would really like to get a reasonable degree of fluency in it, particularly because part of my family came to Canada from Norway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Grammaticus Hexaglot Newbie Norway Joined 5753 days ago 36 posts - 40 votes Speaks: FrenchC2, Norwegian*, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 5 28 March 2009 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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Hello,
Norwegian is easy and accessible for English-speakers and if you already know some German, that will also be very helpful for the vocabulary. The professor wrote something about norwegian being the easiest of all languages to learn for an English-speaker and I tend to agree. As you've already figured out, the main difficulty for English-speakers is our readiness to speak English. You must have a reasonably good command of the language before you can expect norwegians to speak to you in norwegian. I know English-speakers who have spent years in Norway without learning any norwegian. Nowadays, you'll even find waiters who don't speak norwegian! If you're commited to learning norwegian, you should probably set yourself some goal - for example, pass the Bergenstest, which entitles you to study in norwegian. Eventually, if you're persistent enough, your norwegian friends will start talking to you in norwegian after a year or so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeito Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5817 days ago 55 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin, German, Italian, Portuguese | Message 3 of 5 29 March 2009 at 12:51am | IP Logged |
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I studied Swedish in Stockholm. I agree with what our friend from Norge said. Swedes tend not only to speak good English, they speak highly idoimatic English. When I was first learning, they might speak to me a little while just for the novelty of speaking to an American in Swedish and maybe to gauge who well I was doing. But they would quickly revert to English, once the novelty wore off. Sometimes, with people who didn't know me, I pretended I didn't speak English so that I could converse only in Swedish. This ruse was successful because I am bilingual in Spanish and could convince the person I was speaking to that Spanish was my native language. It backfired a couple of times when I met Swedes who spoke Spanish and wanted to practice that language with me!!
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| Lapislazuli Tetraglot Senior Member Austria Joined 7036 days ago 146 posts - 170 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, ItalianB1 Studies: French, Hungarian, Esperanto, Czech | Message 4 of 5 01 April 2009 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
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I did an exchange semester in Sweden, and at the point I came there I could already speak (my university courses were also in Swedish) but it took me a while to convince some of my mates at the student-dorm that they did not have to speak English to me. They were rather persistent in speaking English and so I was whit Swedish. They talked to me in English, I answered in Swedish. Some of them did not even realise that I wasn't speaking in English, because as a foreign student they expected me to do so.
After three weeks at a party one of those guys, who had with lots of amazement realized that I could in fact speak Swedish asked me the inevitable quetion: "But WHY did you learn Swedish?" (they asked me that a lot) And another one exclaimed in much bigger amazement: "Really? You learned Swedish?" And I answered: "I have only spoken Swedish to you during the last three weeks. Didn't you realise?" And really hadn't and was really confused. So for the next three weeks everytime we met he would say: "Men jag vet nu, att du kan också prata svenska." And then he never talked to me in English again. But then I also have had the other experience in my university class, were my colleagues fully accepted me speaking Swedish and never even tried to speak English to me. And they have also been very helpful, when when I did not understand something or when helping me to correct my assignments. I guess they also found it very uncommon and interesting that someone would really like to learn Swedish. But then, as I was taking the theatre- and film-studies courses, they were also kind of interesting people with uncommon hobbies, so I suppose for them it was not so strange that I had decided to learn a less-commonly studied language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| couragepiece93 Groupie United States Joined 5768 days ago 77 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin | Message 5 of 5 02 April 2009 at 1:57am | IP Logged |
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I'll be studying in Norge for a year =D I'm going to be a sophomore in high school, and will be there from August 09-July '10. I'm studying Norwegian now, and hope to be good enough in the language by the time I leave to be able to interact, and become fluent by the time I leave.
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