A language learners’ forum

Deinonysus wrote:The eight dialects that are offered are:

• Oslo
• Trondheim
• Stavanger
• Malm
• Bergen
• Sandnessjøen
• Elverum
• Tromsø

Are there any ones in particular with some unique phonological features that it would be good to focus on? I'm thinking in particular about the realization of the tones.

I don't know why, but I've heard foreigners say that they find people from Stavanger particularly hard to understand.

tractor wrote:I don't know why, but I've heard foreigners say that they find people from Stavanger particularly hard to understand.

Last year I watched the series Lykkeland in which everyone spoke Stavanger-mål. I told a Norwegian friend of mine about it, he imitated the accent and said: "Even I find them hard to understand!" (I don't. There's nothing special about it - but it's the least common of the five you're likely to hear around here. Maybe it's the combination of their tones plus the skarre-r.)

That's interesting that the Stavanger accent is considered difficult! Jeff identified one of the Assimil voices as sounding like the Stavanger intonation and I don't have much trouble with it, but maybe that's because I'm used to a uvular r from other languages and I'm not familiar enough with the Oslo tones yet to be thrown off by different sounding tones.

Norsk

I have a mnemonic system for Norwegian tones. For tone 1 (which starts low) I picture an image associated with the word on the ground, in a hole, or in the dirt. For tone 2 I picture something in the sky (possibly with little flappy wings) or on an airplane.

I don't have a mnemonic system for gender. I don't have as much trouble remembering that for whatever reason.

I've decided that I will hold off on The mystery of Nils for now, as well as Langenscheidt. I'm spreading myself too thin trying to make progress on all six courses at once. Those two require the heaviest Anki use. Duolingo and Pimsleur have built-in spaced repetition and Assimil does to an extent as well (I don't usually supplement it with Anki but in this case I'm using it just for the tones). For CALST I'm only doing the Phonology drills so there's nothing to memorize.

English

I've made a lot of changes to my new English writing system since the last time I posted about it. I realized I didn't need the circumflex markings for the long checked vowels so now I'm using circumflex to mark long vowels, so the macrons are gone. The long /ɑː/ now has an acute instead of a dot and it's distinguished with the BATH lexical set by spelling. I also added three extra consonants (ç, ᵹ, and ß) on top of ð and þ to keep a strict rule that the short form of each consonant is exactly one letter.

Here are some examples of words that use the new consonants:

• teçer (teacher)
• fáðer (father) as opposed to ráther (BATH set)
• ᵹift (gift)
• eᵹer (eager)
• finᵹer (finger) as opposed to singer (no hard g sound)
• Leßa (Lisa)
• eþer (ether/aether)

The insular ᵹ is used for a hard /g/ sound before a slender vowel and also to indicate a hard /g/ after/ŋ/.

The ß symbol is used like in German after a long vowel to show an /s/ sound that does not get voiced. It can also be used before a voiced consonant as in Crißmàss (Christmas). The letter s would be voiced as in "plasma". It is not needed before a slender vowel because in that case the letter c is used.

Progress-o-meter™

Norsk

: 9 / 60 Pimsleur Norwegian
: 62 / 860 Duolingo Norwegian
: 10 / 100 Assimil Le norvégien
: 4 / 26 The Mystery of Nils (Part 1)
: 0 / 15 Langenscheidt Norwegisch mit System
: 15 / 15 CALST long ø drills
: 1 / 6 CALST long a drills

English

: 2 / 21 Nathaniel Hawthorne - The House of Seven Gables

Norwegian has been fun but I watched a video on Lithuanian last week so I'm back to Arabic now. I'll get to that in my Arabic log.

Norwegian has been really fun, and I think the work I've been doing with the phonology drills on short vs. long vowels will be very helpful when I revisit German, because that's something I had been worried about. The next time I work on a Germanic language I can't decide whether it will be German or Norwegian. I'm leaning toward German but Norwegian is very fun and I'll absolutely be returning to it.

Here is my final progress for now:

Progress-o-meter™

Norsk

: 10 / 60 Pimsleur Norwegian
: 83 / 860 Duolingo Norwegian
: 12 / 100 Assimil Le norvégien
: 4 / 26 The Mystery of Nils (Part 1)
: 0 / 15 Langenscheidt Norwegisch mit System
: 15 / 15 CALST long ø drills
: 6 / 6 CALST long a drills

English

: 2 / 21 Nathaniel Hawthorne - The House of Seven Gables