Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby DaveBee » Mon Mar 27, 2017 3:26 pm

tastyonions wrote:According to the English Proficiency Index, the Finnish are right behind the Dutch and Swedes in English, ahead of all the germanophone countries and way ahead of the Romance and Slavic speakers: http://www.ef.edu/epi/
    Netherlands 72.16
    Belgium 60.90
    France 54.33
It would be interesting to see the Belgium figures broken down further to Wallonia (french)/Flanders (dutch).

EDIT
Doh! The Belgium numbers are broken down!

Flanders (dutch): 68.57
Wallonia (french): 53.08

EDIT2
Switzerland (another multi-language european country) shows much less variation.
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby smallwhite » Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:23 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:I've concluded, smallwhite, I want to now tempt you with Afrikaans- as the linguistic distance between Dutch and Afrikaans is half of that between English and Dutch! Or you could try Norwegian for me, and report back, since now with Dutch and Swedish experience and being a speaker of English, you'll get there in no time! :)


Forgot to reply to this post. I've looked at the Afrikaans and Norwegian textbooks in the library a dozen a couple of times. Afrikaans most likely not as I know next to nothing about it. Norwegian is possible but very low priority because of the low number of native speakers and their high English ability, and even lower priority now that Expug has said its dialects are tough. You have better reasons to learn it than I do!
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby Xmmm » Wed Mar 29, 2017 4:06 pm

solocricket wrote:Out of the Nordic languages, Icelandic might be easiest for me, because I've been to Iceland and brought back a goodly sized suitcase of books :D


Alaric Hall's mp3 course in Icelandic looks like a good free resource. Based on the first two hours, I would say Icelandic presents unusual pronunciation challenges relative to other European languages. :)
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby tarvos » Wed Mar 29, 2017 4:18 pm

smallwhite wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:I've concluded, smallwhite, I want to now tempt you with Afrikaans- as the linguistic distance between Dutch and Afrikaans is half of that between English and Dutch! Or you could try Norwegian for me, and report back, since now with Dutch and Swedish experience and being a speaker of English, you'll get there in no time! :)


Forgot to reply to this post. I've looked at the Afrikaans and Norwegian textbooks in the library a dozen a couple of times. Afrikaans most likely not as I know next to nothing about it. Norwegian is possible but very low priority because of the low number of native speakers and their high English ability, and even lower priority now that Expug has said its dialects are tough. You have better reasons to learn it than I do!


I don't find the dialects that big of a deal, really.
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby tungemål » Tue Mar 08, 2022 7:25 pm

You might be right that spoken Norwegian is hard to understand. But I'd like to point out that TV-series is maybe the most difficult you can do (if you watch without subtitles). I have watched some series in German and in Spanish, which I found hard (but a useful exercise). I needed help from checking subtitles afterwards, especially for Spanish.

I haven't watched those Norwegian series you mention. But I briefly checked "Heimebane" now and heard 3 different dialects, so it's not only standard Oslo speech. Even the title (which you misspelled) is Nynorsk, not Bokmål.

I would suggest finding other material while practicing listening comprehension. I use podcasts, radio, youtube, learner material - anything is easier than TV-series. When you are B2-C1 you're ready to tackle TV-series without subtitles.
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Mar 10, 2022 1:30 am

After doing some dabbling in Norwegian myelf last year and the year prior, for me personally it wasn't as easy as anticipated.

The language is straightforward enough but there are two big minefields - 1.) pronunciation. 2.) dialects.

1.) Pronunciation
Not enough learning materials contain IPA (or even a reliable pronunciation guide). Not enough contain tone/stress markings.

Most often Norwegian course materials focus on a kind of common agreed dialect based somewhere in Oslo (from people acquiring the dialect from having lived there throughout their childhood/lives). Clearly this is done to provide consistent content for teaching that doesn't vary as wildly as the Norwegian dialects.

While Norwegian is not standardised and I think that's wonderful, given they take this 'Oslo dialect' approach with regards to vocabularly and pronunciation, why not then clearly provide the tools (IPA, stress/tone markings) throughout your course? Yes tone and stress vary from region to region, and in some places there are no tones (so I'm told), so then, just teach the Oslo dialect properly/completely with stress/tone, pronunciation and bla bla bla...

I get slightly perturbed by the fact that it is assumed that most learners don't give two hoots about sounding foreign to some degree and therefore this myth is perpetuated by providing incomplete learning materials. If I have no guide aside audio, which is also good, but not the complete picture, expect me to take ten hundred years longer to learn correct pronunciation fiddling around with apps and dictionaries clarifying how to say something as if I'm from Oslo.

Give me a whole host of learning materials with IPA and tone/stress markings and I will learn vastly quicker than having to look up every single new word because I have no idea which tone to use or where to place the stress. I'm sure it would eventually become second nature hearing it frequently, but I don't live in Norway!

2.) Dialects
This is something that didn't affect me with the beginning stages of the language except for the variation in number of genders taught/used in course books.

I'd imagine it would be more of an issue for someone having learned outside of Norway then moving there or spending considerable amounts of time there after hitting the course books.

As a side note, I'm no longer in the beginning stages not because of advancing in the language but the exact opposite - I'm no longer studying it. I do hope to return to it some day.

Course materials designed with the assumption that it is easier for a learner to count masculine and feminine together to simplify things is not good, even if that is common among many speakers of Norwegian.

The fact is, certain people/dialects do indeed still use three genders and it would just be easier for a serious learner to use course materials that acknowledge all three genders as opposed to learning some as common gender then only to find out later that words XYZ are masculine and ABC feminine and it matters. It's almost like trying to undo fixed errors later in one's learning. Furthermore, there aren't enough resources (or it's not easy to discern amongst them) to choose a good amount of resources that focus on 3 genders.

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When I return to learning Norwegian I know I'm in for a very lengthy journey from the basics through to high intermediate. Afterwards I'd assume it will become much more predictible as to how to pronounce things with accuracy, foreign words perhaps an exception.

So, from the little knowledge I have of the languages that are found on this planet including my dabbling in Norwegian, I conclude that Norwegian is not the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn, provided one wants to learn it thoroughly, taking into account the resources available out there.

Therefore, I would hazard a guess that the trophy for first place in the category for the easiest language to learn for a native English speaker who wants to learn a language accurately as opposed to 'close enough is good enough', would perhaps be awarded to Afrikaans or Frisian. Then it becomes a comparison of how many resources are available and for Frisian there can't be much out there for English speakers.
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby tungemål » Thu Mar 10, 2022 8:23 am

PeterMollenburg wrote:1.) Pronunciation

Good point about pronunciation guides for tones and stress. I can speculate on why it's lacking in learning materials.

Tones:
I think tones in Norwegian is seen as something not important and in fact totally superfluous because it's not vital for understanding like the tones in Chinese. I suspect most Norwegians are not aware of tones in the language - they might have heard that our language has tones, but couldn't tell you what tone a particular word has. Because if you haven't trained your ear for it it's not easy to hear. There's no tradition for teaching this and apparantly it's hard to find a systematic ordering and overview on this aspect of the language.

Stress markings should be notated because they are important to get right, but it could be that there are rules that you can follow to deduce stress patterns

I think it's laudable that you want to get the pronunciation right, but at the same time we as learners have to accept that we will sound like foreigners when speaking. This perfectionist attitude might be the reason that many (some) native English speakers in Norway continue speaking English, even after 10 years. Usually they understand perfectly well, but avoid speaking Norwegian, something that I find slightly annoying.

PeterMollenburg wrote:2.) Dialects

Gender: I didn't know that masculine and feminine are lumped together. That hurts my language sensibility, even if I know that it has disappeared in some dialects.

There's definitely a tacitly accepted standard pronunciation in the "neutral Oslo speech". Be aware that there are several sosiolects in Oslo as well.

All the other dialects could be a challenge. I think studying Nynorsk as well should prepare you for understanding dialects.

But it's not like Norwegian is the only language with dialects. In Spanish there's (at least) the difference between standard castellano and andalucian which you have to get used to. German has widely varying dialects - but they're not that much used. Britain certainly has a wide range of dialects.
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby Le Baron » Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:29 pm

TSS42 wrote:To support my point, here is a clip from Side om Side. Learners at all levels are welcome to try and decipher what Frode (the man) is saying :D

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i02cc2lowzx7x ... 2.mp4?dl=0

PS. Subtitles available on NRK.

I'd agree with you that supposed 'ease' for certain languages is often vastly exaggerated. The sort of thing in the video is surely evident in every language being learned by any given learner. All languages have people who are less clear, who slur and swallow words more.

I also agree with tungemål that TV series' are never a great measure for a learner. People speak quickly with sometimes unnaturally confident sentences because they are repeating a learned script. And whether it's Norway, England or here in NL you get people with different dialects and accents in the mix, plus deliberately large doses of vernacular language in order for the script to supposedly 'reflect reality'.
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Mar 10, 2022 4:35 pm

TSS42 wrote:To support my point, here is a clip from Side om Side. Learners at all levels are welcome to try and decipher what Frode (the man) is saying :D


Alright, the video is lagging here. While I agree that the lad speaks a bit less clearly than the lass, I had no problems understanding him. At least not after the second listen. (But then I'm used to spoken content on Youtube at 2x speed.)

Listen. Listen again. And then listen a bit more. Soon you'll be dodging bullets (like in the Matrix movies). Something that’s above your level (whether fast or difficult) will be easier as your ears get accustomed to it. All of a sudden you won’t find it particularly fast.
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Re: Is Norwegian the easiest for an EN native speaker?

Postby daegga » Thu Mar 10, 2022 9:52 pm

TSS42 wrote:To support my point, here is a clip from Side om Side. Learners at all levels are welcome to try and decipher what Frode (the man) is saying :D

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i02cc2lowzx7x ... 2.mp4?dl=0

PS. Subtitles available on NRK.


You can also speak Norwegian like that:
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