Beginning My Norwegian Studies—Intensive Learning

[HuangYouGuang]

My husband and I have recently moved to Norway, and will soon be filing an application for temporary residency under a business venture visa. For quite a while now, I felt that it would be most appropriate to wait until that application was accepted before formally beginning my Norwegian studies. I generally don't like to commit myself to learning a language until it's been more of a sure-thing. However, I've been told that it will look favorable on my application (and it will be more likely to be accepted) if I can demonstrate some level of competency in the Norwegian language, and/or ongoing efforts to learn it. So, I have begun, as of a few days ago.

I've been learning foreign languages for about a decade now, and I recently completed a roughly two-year round of intensive studies of Chinese (https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/xgm1fh/after_about_a_year_and_a_half_of_intensive_study/). I experienced great success with my study methods—I increased my total vocabulary from ~5000 words to ~20.000 words during that time. I would like to do the same thing with norsk.

My Goals:

- To learn ~4.500 words by the time my application is accepted (or rejected, as the case may be)

- To be able to read basic children's stories by the end of this study period

- To be able to watch and understand Peppa Gris (and other similar content) by the end of this study period

- To be able to formulate speech with B1 competency. To be able to speak about topics in the past, present, and future; about my own wants, desires, and plans; about basic topics and ideas in my everyday life

- To have the pitch accent for each word memorized (as representative of the Urban East Norwegian accent)

- To achieve high-precision pronunciation of the vowels /y/, /ʉ/, as well as the various retroflex consonants in moderately-paced speech

If my application is accepted, I will revise my goals to include more medium- and long-term milestones.

Strategy:

- Use Scroll-io to analyze basic texts (starting with learner-directed short stories and moving on to child-directed short stories) and produce a list of vocabulary to be learned

- Use Anki to commit new vocabulary to memory; words such as prepositions which do not lend themselves well to simple memorization (due to the complexity of their usage) will instead be learned through context, by reading, and later by experimenting with language production

- Learn at a rate of 30 words per day

- Use Scroll-io to keep track of my progress

Scroll-io isn't quite what I would like it to be—it doesn't count words properly, because e.g. it counts "lære", "lærer" etc. separately—but it is enough to fulfill the basic functions of highlighting unknown words in texts, providing a frequency list of vocabulary for texts that I've run through the program, and allowing me to compare the approximate difficulty of different texts. I used a similar program when going through my Chinese studies, and it was tremendously useful.

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I know this is a very ambitious plan. I am helped in a number of areas:

- (for pronunciation) I have extensive experience with world languages' pronunciation systems and in fact work as an accent coach

- (for Norwegian, specifically) I speak English as my native language, and speak German with B2 competency, both languages which are closely related to Norwegian

- (for tonemes) I speak Mandarin Chinese with B2 competency, and this gives me experience with tonal languages.

I am going to continue posting here to document my progress as a kind of journal. I will write about how my experience with the language changes as I go through the learning process, and about any unexpected difficulties that I run into. I was inspired by similar posts when I was a relative beginner with Chinese. They gave me the strength to keep going. After all, learning a new language can be a daunting task. I hope that my posts will also be helpful to other learners.

[Saim]

Good luck!

- To be able to read basic children's stories by the end of this study period

- To be able to watch and understand Peppa Gris (and other similar content) by the end of this study period

I'm not sure if I understand this part of the plan. I think as an English native with solid German you'll be able to understand quite a bit more than children's stories and Peppa Pig with 4,500 words studied in Norwegian.

[marcuspezzaioli]

Good luck. Nothing wrong with a bit of ambition.

[LupCenușiu]

Good luck!

- To be able to read basic children's stories by the end of this study period

- To be able to watch and understand Peppa Gris (and other similar content) by the end of this study period

I'm not sure if I understand this part of the plan. I think as an English native with solid German you'll be able to understand quite a bit more than children's stories and Peppa Pig with 4,500 words studied in Norwegian.

I will go ahead and say that anyone regardless of the linguistic background will be able to understand quite a bit more than children's stories and Peppa Pig with 4,500 words studied in any given language. (assuming this knowledge has correspondence in the writing system for logographic scripts). Obviously, you will run into some unknown words here and there, but then again, this can happen at 20,000 too. Even in your native language, when you encounter rare archaic, regional or highly specialized terms. But 4,500 is well beyond children's stories and Peppa.

OP, I looked through your reading Mandarin thread on Reddit. Nice one. Also, I assume you did the research, but just in case you missed it, for Norwegian:
https://www.reddit.com/r/norsk/comments ... _4_months/

Good luck!

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

I followed your progress on Reddit and Chineseforums. Although our approaches were very different, I always enjoyed your updates. I am sorry to see you move on from Mandarin, but onward and upward with your new language learning goals!

[Sprachensammlerin]

I find your plan very interesting and inspiring and will also read your Reddit thread about learning Chinese. Are the stats displayed there, made with scroll-io? Do you find it better than LingQ?

I will follow your log closely. I'm currently learning Finnish and am also around B2 in Chinese.

Viel Erfolg!

[Lawyer&Mom]

I found Norwegian to be quite transparent after reaching a B2 in German. (I only did a semester of Norwegian to satisfy a graduation requirement, but with my background it was a delight.). Given your dedication learning a much more challenging language, I think you will be very, very successful with Norwegian.