An American in Norway

[dubendorf]

One thing I would like to do with this log is to document for myself (and others if they're interested) my experience with various language learning materials and who they might be for. This is specifically for Norwegian, but perhaps it will also be useful for other languages from the same sources. My ultimate goal is to figure out what is the path I would have taken if I could do it all over again. Obviously, one will use multiple resources on their language learning journey. I am not reviewing each resource as if it is the only thing you will ever use. Instead, I am thinking about it in the context of other tools and on the merits of what the tool is intended for.

I'll start with duolingo.

Duolingo
I used Duolingo roughly 30 minutes a day every day for about six months. Basically, I tried to maximize the "Early Bird" and "Night Owl" bonuses every day. And I did buy the premium version. After six months, it appears I reached the end of Section 2 Unit 6 in the current numbering scheme, although there were multiple revisions during the time I used it. I think there are 126 Units spread across 5 Sections, which means I completed about 10% of the course (so at that rate it would take roughly 5 years to complete the course). Given how much time I invested over 6 months, I don't feel like I learned much. Duolingo has a virtuous goal of providing free language learning resources to anyone. However, it is unclear to me who their target audience is.

Pros
- Gamification If gamification and social media aspects give you motivation to actually finish the course, this might be the right app for you.

Cons
- Slow In the six months I used Duolingo, I learned basic nouns for food, people, and animals (indefinite, definite, and plural); some present-tense verbs; and some basic grammar rules ("Subject Verb" for a statement and "Verb Subject" for a question, for example), but not much more.
- Misleading if not inaccurate Duolingo teaches phrases that are not particularly useful in every day life. For example, it hammers in "Jeg vil ha" to make a request, which is somewhat rude and uncommon in real life situations. Better phrases would by "Kunne jeg få" or "Jeg vil gjerne ha" etc. From using Duolingo you would not know that that was rude or what the alternatives were. It also did not teach me phrases that I hear every day in Norway, such as, Vil du ha en pose? or Kvittering? (Do you want a bag? Receipt?).
- Not much pronunciation, listening, or speaking Obviously, you can hear the computer-generated voices and imitate them, but it's hard to know if you're pronouncing it right if you don't have targeted pronunciation instruction. And there are no recordings from native speakers.

Overall
I am not sure who this app is for.

If you are traveling to Norway for a few weeks on vacation and want to learn some survival phrases and are willing to devote 30 minutes a day for six months before your trip, then you will not achieve your goal with Duolingo. You would be better off with The Mystery of Nils or one of the free MOOCs from UiO or NTNU where you hear native speakers using common phrases.

If your goal is to learn Norwegian to a professional/conversational level to work and live in Norway then it will take you a very long time to achieve your goal, if ever. At 30 minutes a day for 6 months, as far as I know, I did not encounter a single past tense verb. By comparison, the UiO MOOC exposes you to multiple verb tenses in the first four weeks.

And if your goal is to read Norwegian literature, I do not think you can achieve that with Duolingo and I would recommend you use something else with more reading, such as the Linguaphone Norsk Krus, which introduces some short literature excerpts by lesson 50 or The Mystery of Nils, which is a proper story.

There are better and faster ways of learning Norwegian and I cannot recommend this app. That being said, if the gamification in the app is motivating for you then maybe this can be the right app for you. For me, I was highly motivated to learn Norwegian and did not need artificial motivation and Duolingo mostly got in the way of me actually learning the language.

[dubendorf]

Oppdatering

I just completed Lesson 23 of the Linguaphone Norsk Kurs so I am almost halfway done. I am still waiting for my physical copy to come in the mail . It feels like each lesson is roughly the same difficulty as the previous lesson, but given that each lesson adds 40-50 words/phrases/conjugations that must mean I'm learning something.

I was looking for some way to add additional input throughout my day and saw some reference to Iquanamon's multi-track approach. I thought maybe using Pimsleur while I'm walking/hiking/running would be a good addition to Linguaphone. Luckily, my library has the full Pimsleur Level 1 for Norwegian (30 lessons) available digitally. Lessons 1-5 are on hold for 20 weeks, Lessons 6-10 and 11-15 are on hold for 2 weeks, but the rest of the lessons are available. (I guess almost no one makes it past Lesson 5 ). So, I decided to start with Lesson 16 since it's available right away. Luckily, it is very comprehensible, but still just outside my comfort zone so I don't think I'm missing much from the previous lessons. (Though I might place a hold on them anyways.)

Pimsleur is an interesting complement to Linguaphone. With Linguaphone, I am just reading/listening/shadowing and studying grammar, vocab, and some cultural context. (For example, apparently "to be as thirsty as a town messenger" is a Norwegian saying: å være tørst som et bybud, lol) Which is to say, it's a lot of input, but not much need to actually craft a sentence. Pimsleur, on the other hand, actually asks you to answer a question or come up with a phrase or perform addition in your target language. I think this actually helps a lot with 1) thinking in one's target language 2) hearing the words from the primary course in another context and 3) actually forming sentences and producing thoughts in the target language. I tried out the first few lessons of Pimsluer and Michel Thomas a while ago and they seemed very trivial, but jumping ahead to Lesson 16 it actually feels very useful and engaging. I am looking forward to doing more of it. I wonder what the Norwegians think of me as I'm marching through the forest chanting I don't have enough money, Can I have some money, I only have 30 dollars over and over, lol.

[PeterMollenburg]

Hi dubendorf,

An interesting read thus far, your log, that is. I read through and found myself thinking I'd like to ask you a few questions...

1. How do you deal with the Norwegian tones?

Some people find ignoring them is best given they can vary dramatically from one part of Norway to another, which sees pinning them down accurately when faced with such seemingly random pronunciation too fraught with pitfalls. Some likely go by feel. That is, they imitate the best they can, everything they hear and hope that eventually it will fall into place. If this fails, a little foreign accent never hurt, right? I honestly don't see this as such a bad idea, but it's just not my style. Then there's the foolz, a.k.a. me, those (okay, maybe just me) who insist on looking up every new word (and sometimes other words repeatedly until it sticks) in a paper or digital dictionary in order to mimic the phonetically transcribed manner of speaking (stress, tones, IPA), well as far as a general Oslo accent goes anyway. Actually, perhaps only the Oslo accent (or maybe one or two more) would be able to be studied this way. What are your thoughts and experiences with pronunciation?

2. What are you using for a dictionary?

3. What brought you to Norway?

I'd love (and I'm sure others too) to hear more about how you arrived in Norway. The back story, the goals, aspirations, ambitions, the reality of your new daily life, even the location- perhaps if only general if you'd really prefer not to give away too much personal detail. Are you working? Studying? etc etc. When, if at all, do you plan to move back to the U.S. (I mean you're an American, so I'm assuming you moved from the U.S.?) or to another country?

Forgive me for being nosy. There aren't so many Norwegian learners here and even less still who have recently moved to Norge.

And btw, good luck with your continuing language learning journey(s) and I wish your move to be a very successful one!

[dubendorf]

Hi dubendorf,

An interesting read thus far, your log, that is. I read through and found myself thinking I'd like to ask you a few questions...

1. How do you deal with the Norwegian tones?

Some people find ignoring them is best given they can vary dramatically from one part of Norway to another, which sees pinning them down accurately when faced with such seemingly random pronunciation too fraught with pitfalls. Some likely go by feel. That is, they imitate the best they can, everything they hear and hope that eventually it will fall into place. If this fails, a little foreign accent never hurt, right? I honestly don't see this as such a bad idea, but it's just not my style. Then there's the foolz, a.k.a. me, those (okay, maybe just me) who insist on looking up every new word (and sometimes other words repeatedly until it sticks) in a paper or digital dictionary in order to mimic the phonetically transcribed manner of speaking (stress, tones, IPA), well as far as a general Oslo accent goes anyway. Actually, perhaps only the Oslo accent (or maybe one or two more) would be able to be studied this way. What are your thoughts and experiences with pronunciation?

2. What are you using for a dictionary?

3. What brought you to Norway?

I'd love (and I'm sure others too) to hear more about how you arrived in Norway. The back story, the goals, aspirations, ambitions, the reality of your new daily life, even the location- perhaps if only general if you'd really prefer not to give away too much personal detail. Are you working? Studying? etc etc. When, if at all, do you plan to move back to the U.S. (I mean you're an American, so I'm assuming you moved from the U.S.?) or to another country?

Forgive me for being nosy. There aren't so many Norwegian learners here and even less still who have recently moved to Norge.

And btw, good luck with your continuing language learning journey(s) and I wish your move to be a very successful one!

Hi, Peter

Thanks for the thoughtful questions and kind comments! Happy to oblige my vanity to tell you about what brought us to Norway.

I typed up a long response, but unfortunately the forum logged me out for some reason and I lost what I wrote. This time, I wrote offline so here's draft 2:

1. For general pronunciation instruction, I have been leaning on the Mystery of Nils Youtube page where the creator shares video on how to pronounce various Norwegian letters, syllables, and words. These have instructions on how to hold your tongue and lips, when to “voice” the sounds, etc. This has been very helpful. (https://www.youtube.com/@TheNorwegianSchool) When I speak or shadow I try to remember these cues and really exaggerate the mouth position to get the sounds right.

But you asked about tones. For this, I haven’t done anything formal and I’m not aware of any formal instructions on this. But from listening to native speakers IRL, on podcasts, and on TV I have started to get a “feel” for what types of tonal changes people use. Something that has worked for me is to exaggerate the tones as if I’m “making fun” of Norwegian. As an English speaker, the words and tones are quite comical and endearing and this is what I love about the language. I have noticed that when I am self-conscious I tend to mumble and speak in a flat tone, which people respond to by instantly switching to English. However, if I speak up and use a “mock” Norwegian accent and try to exaggerate the ups and downs, whoever I am speaking to continues right along in Norwegian. So I think exaggerating helps a lot. Honestly, sometimes when I hear native speakers in certain dialects it sounds as if they’re using a mocking accent. Exaggeration = just right.

2. For a dictionary, I tend to use https://ordbokene.no/, which I think is the canonical source. However, it is all in Norwegian, so sometimes I have to copy and paste the definition into Google Translate. When it comes to longer sentences or passages from my lessons or from text in the real world, I typically just use Google Translate.

3. The original reason I went to Norway was for work. My wife and I work together and our boss started a collaboration with colleagues in Trondheim. She visited a few times and had a 4 week stay. Even though we work on different projects, I managed to tag along and was able to work from Trondheim while she was there. We had such an incredible time and made some really close friends while we were there, which was lucky and I think helped a lot.

There were a few things that really endeared us to Norway. One is the accessibility of everything. Within a 5 minute walk of our apartment there were three grocery stores, several gyms, a bus stop that went straight to work every ten minutes and a downtown restaurant area. It was so pleasant and convenient being able to pop out for five minutes to grab groceries or whatever. The North American mind cannot conceive of this.

Another thing we really liked was the culture around work and family. We had clearly carried our American work stress with us, because we seemed like the most stressed out people on the street. By contrast, the Nords seemed so relaxed. They often left work at 3 pm to play outside. And, unlike the US, there were kids outside everywhere. The barnehager (kindergartens) have a lot of outside time so it was common to see parades of toddlers wandering around the city. It was very different from the US where kids are sequestered indoors in cars or schools or homes all the time. Families felt much more integrated into the world and work was way less important by comparison.

I am a bit of a transit nerd, so I was really happy to have access to so much good infrastructure. I could walk or bike anywhere. And there was easy access to buses and trains. There was really no need for a car to live there, which is my dream. It is a bit different in Oslo, because there’s more transit options (trams, subways), but everything is much further apart so it takes longer to get to where you’re going. The wildest experience was taking the bus to go on a hyttertur (hut trip). Just a few bucks and a bus ride and you could find yourself hiking all alone in the forest to a cabin!

That brings me to another point, which is the enormous importance and access to nature. There is so much green space and it is so easy to get to. Trondheim is beautiful in this regard and Oslo is even better. There’s a national forest across the street from our house with virtually endless trails. Where we lived in the US before, you had to drive, sometimes for a very long time, to get anywhere near a trailhead.

There are lots of other things. There is a high prioritization of quality food in the grocery store. The produce is so much better. There’s a really strong specialty coffee scene. There’s also so much more of a cooperative, community spirit. For example, I remember our older Norwegian colleague saying during Covid, “I disagree with the mask mandate, but I trust the government to make the right decision and we all need to work together.” Coming from America, that’s such a mind-blowing perspective.

Anyways, we returned to the states and both of our jobs were ending in the next year or so. We were debating whether to stay where we were or to move elsewhere. I really wanted to move somewhere with 1. good transit, 2. access to the mountains, and 3. strong work-life balance. It is rare to find all three in North America, so we looked abroad. My wife really pushed for Norway so, when I applied for jobs, I applied to about 60 jobs all over the US, got 1 interview, and 0 offers. By contrast, I applied to 6 jobs in Norway, got 3 interviews, and 1 job offer. For whatever reason, Norway wanted me more than America. In the end, the decision to move here came down to chance and I feel incredibly lucky how it turned out.

Now, we are living and working in Oslo. We are very happy to be here and have found a neighborhood that meets all of our desires: easy access to groceries/gyms/restaurants, near the forest, and good access to transit. In the long term, we would prefer to move to one of the smaller cities (Bergen, Trondheim, or Tromso). If, for whatever reason, we decide to leave Norway I suspect we will move elsewhere in Europe before moving back to the States. I think the lifestyle and amenities just matches our needs better here.

Anyways, that was a lot. I hope it is interesting! I always love to talk about Norway.

[PeterMollenburg]

Hi dubendorf,

An interesting read thus far, your log, that is. I read through and found myself thinking I'd like to ask you a few questions...

1. How do you deal with the Norwegian tones?

Some people find ignoring them is best given they can vary dramatically from one part of Norway to another, which sees pinning them down accurately when faced with such seemingly random pronunciation too fraught with pitfalls. Some likely go by feel. That is, they imitate the best they can, everything they hear and hope that eventually it will fall into place. If this fails, a little foreign accent never hurt, right? I honestly don't see this as such a bad idea, but it's just not my style. Then there's the foolz, a.k.a. me, those (okay, maybe just me) who insist on looking up every new word (and sometimes other words repeatedly until it sticks) in a paper or digital dictionary in order to mimic the phonetically transcribed manner of speaking (stress, tones, IPA), well as far as a general Oslo accent goes anyway. Actually, perhaps only the Oslo accent (or maybe one or two more) would be able to be studied this way. What are your thoughts and experiences with pronunciation?

2. What are you using for a dictionary?

3. What brought you to Norway?

I'd love (and I'm sure others too) to hear more about how you arrived in Norway. The back story, the goals, aspirations, ambitions, the reality of your new daily life, even the location- perhaps if only general if you'd really prefer not to give away too much personal detail. Are you working? Studying? etc etc. When, if at all, do you plan to move back to the U.S. (I mean you're an American, so I'm assuming you moved from the U.S.?) or to another country?

Forgive me for being nosy. There aren't so many Norwegian learners here and even less still who have recently moved to Norge.

And btw, good luck with your continuing language learning journey(s) and I wish your move to be a very successful one!

Hi, Peter

Thanks for the thoughtful questions and kind comments! Happy to oblige my vanity to tell you about what brought us to Norway.

I typed up a long response, but unfortunately the forum logged me out for some reason and I lost what I wrote. This time, I wrote offline so here's draft 2:

1. For general pronunciation instruction, I have been leaning on the Mystery of Nils Youtube page where the creator shares video on how to pronounce various Norwegian letters, syllables, and words. These have instructions on how to hold your tongue and lips, when to “voice” the sounds, etc. This has been very helpful. (https://www.youtube.com/@TheNorwegianSchool) When I speak or shadow I try to remember these cues and really exaggerate the mouth position to get the sounds right.

But you asked about tones. For this, I haven’t done anything formal and I’m not aware of any formal instructions on this. But from listening to native speakers IRL, on podcasts, and on TV I have started to get a “feel” for what types of tonal changes people use. Something that has worked for me is to exaggerate the tones as if I’m “making fun” of Norwegian. As an English speaker, the words and tones are quite comical and endearing and this is what I love about the language. I have noticed that when I am self-conscious I tend to mumble and speak in a flat tone, which people respond to by instantly switching to English. However, if I speak up and use a “mock” Norwegian accent and try to exaggerate the ups and downs, whoever I am speaking to continues right along in Norwegian. So I think exaggerating helps a lot. Honestly, sometimes when I hear native speakers in certain dialects it sounds as if they’re using a mocking accent. Exaggeration = just right.

2. For a dictionary, I tend to use https://ordbokene.no/, which I think is the canonical source. However, it is all in Norwegian, so sometimes I have to copy and paste the definition into Google Translate. When it comes to longer sentences or passages from my lessons or from text in the real world, I typically just use Google Translate.

3. The original reason I went to Norway was for work. My wife and I work together and our boss started a collaboration with colleagues in Trondheim. She visited a few times and had a 4 week stay. Even though we work on different projects, I managed to tag along and was able to work from Trondheim while she was there. We had such an incredible time and made some really close friends while we were there, which was lucky and I think helped a lot.

There were a few things that really endeared us to Norway. One is the accessibility of everything. Within a 5 minute walk of our apartment there were three grocery stores, several gyms, a bus stop that went straight to work every ten minutes and a downtown restaurant area. It was so pleasant and convenient being able to pop out for five minutes to grab groceries or whatever. The North American mind cannot conceive of this.

Another thing we really liked was the culture around work and family. We had clearly carried our American work stress with us, because we seemed like the most stressed out people on the street. By contrast, the Nords seemed so relaxed. They often left work at 3 pm to play outside. And, unlike the US, there were kids outside everywhere. The barnehager (kindergartens) have a lot of outside time so it was common to see parades of toddlers wandering around the city. It was very different from the US where kids are sequestered indoors in cars or schools or homes all the time. Families felt much more integrated into the world and work was way less important by comparison.

I am a bit of a transit nerd, so I was really happy to have access to so much good infrastructure. I could walk or bike anywhere. And there was easy access to buses and trains. There was really no need for a car to live there, which is my dream. It is a bit different in Oslo, because there’s more transit options (trams, subways), but everything is much further apart so it takes longer to get to where you’re going. The wildest experience was taking the bus to go on a hyttertur (hut trip). Just a few bucks and a bus ride and you could find yourself hiking all alone in the forest to a cabin!

That brings me to another point, which is the enormous importance and access to nature. There is so much green space and it is so easy to get to. Trondheim is beautiful in this regard and Oslo is even better. There’s a national forest across the street from our house with virtually endless trails. Where we lived in the US before, you had to drive, sometimes for a very long time, to get anywhere near a trailhead.

There are lots of other things. There is a high prioritization of quality food in the grocery store. The produce is so much better. There’s a really strong specialty coffee scene. There’s also so much more of a cooperative, community spirit. For example, I remember our older Norwegian colleague saying during Covid, “I disagree with the mask mandate, but I trust the government to make the right decision and we all need to work together.” Coming from America, that’s such a mind-blowing perspective.

Anyways, we returned to the states and both of our jobs were ending in the next year or so. We were debating whether to stay where we were or to move elsewhere. I really wanted to move somewhere with 1. good transit, 2. access to the mountains, and 3. strong work-life balance. It is rare to find all three in North America, so we looked abroad. My wife really pushed for Norway so, when I applied for jobs, I applied to about 60 jobs all over the US, got 1 interview, and 0 offers. By contrast, I applied to 6 jobs in Norway, got 3 interviews, and 1 job offer. For whatever reason, Norway wanted me more than America. In the end, the decision to move here came down to chance and I feel incredibly lucky how it turned out.

Now, we are living and working in Oslo. We are very happy to be here and have found a neighborhood that meets all of our desires: easy access to groceries/gyms/restaurants, near the forest, and good access to transit. In the long term, we would prefer to move to one of the smaller cities (Bergen, Trondheim, or Tromso). If, for whatever reason, we decide to leave Norway I suspect we will move elsewhere in Europe before moving back to the States. I think the lifestyle and amenities just matches our needs better here.

Anyways, that was a lot. I hope it is interesting! I always love to talk about Norway.

Hi dubendorf,

Coming from a language nerd obsessed with Europe, yes that was a very interesting reply indeed. Thank you for taking the time -twice- to provide a considerably thorough and thoughtful reply, dubendorf.

I've some friends (a family) living in Oslo whom we visited once over several days, and their feedback has been quite similar - that is, great work-life balance, much time outdoors for the kids and great access to nature. Their comparison is to (mainly urban) Australia, where one of them is from, as I am myself. With a high quality of life and a seemingly usually very sensible government, I think you both choosing Norway is a sound choice indeed.

For working with Norwegian tones I refer to Einar Haugen's Norwegian-English Dictionary (only NO-EN not EN-NO) in both hard and digital copies, which has the tones marked with most words in the dictionary and the online Det norske akademisk ordbok, which similarly marks the two tones. Both seem to be based on Oslo dialects.

I expect you to spread your love of Norway and the Norwegian language round these parts , as it seems my work-life balance is pushing me to take a long-ish break with the language for a while. Good luck and please do continue to share your wonderful adventure as many of us enjoy reading about it. Keep up the studying!

[dubendorf]

Hi dubendorf,

Coming from a language nerd obsessed with Europe, yes that was a very interesting reply indeed. Thank you for taking the time -twice- to provide a considerably thorough and thoughtful reply, dubendorf.

I've some friends (a family) living in Oslo whom we visited once over several days, and their feedback has been quite similar - that is, great work-life balance, much time outdoors for the kids and great access to nature. Their comparison is to (mainly urban) Australia, where one of them is from, as I am myself. With a high quality of life and a seemingly usually very sensible government, I think you both choosing Norway is a sound choice indeed.

For working with Norwegian tones I refer to Einar Haugen's Norwegian-English Dictionary (only NO-EN not EN-NO) in both hard and digital copies, which has the tones marked with most words in the dictionary and the online Det norske akademisk ordbok, which similarly marks the two tones. Both seem to be based on Oslo dialects.

I expect you to spread your love of Norway and the Norwegian language round these parts , as it seems my work-life balance is pushing me to take a long-ish break with the language for a while. Good luck and please do continue to share your wonderful adventure as many of us enjoy reading about it. Keep up the studying!

Thanks for the beta on the dictionaries! Ordbokene doesn't seem to have any pronunciation/tone info so that's helpful.

[jeff_lindqvist]

For working with Norwegian tones I refer to Einar Haugen's Norwegian-English Dictionary (only NO-EN not EN-NO) in both hard and digital copies, which has the tones marked with most words in the dictionary and the online Det norske akademisk ordbok, which similarly marks the two tones. Both seem to be based on Oslo dialects.

I'm not familiar with Haugen's dictionary. Possibly it's based on Oslo dialect(s). As long as it marks the two tones, you all are safe, and can use it as a reference even if you happen to speak something else. As I've said before, the tones are there in all accents, they're just manifested differently.

Dubendorf, if you like shadowing, have a go at Nordavinden og sola. Pick the dialect you like. Shadow it. Over and over again. The story is between 30 and 40 seconds long. Audio, IPA, plain text.

[dubendorf]

Oppdatering

Just completed Lesson 28 of Linguaphone. It feels as though the lessons are starting to get way harder. If I am reading or shadowing and my attention flags a bit it is easy to just pronounce along with the text, but not understand any of it. If I really pay attention, I can often get a "global" understanding of what a passage is about, but I miss many of the words. And the dictionary reference for that lesson will not have a lot of the words that I miss because they were introduced in previous lessons. I think for the first half of the book I was riding on the many words that were already familiar to me before starting this book. However, now there are lots of words that I have "learned" in previous lessons that haven't quite absorbed into my vocabulary and so I just don't recognize them. Now, a bigger and bigger percentage of a lesson is made up of these new words. I hope that being exposed to novel text in this way everyday will continue to reinforce these words, even though it's difficult. It makes clear what is nice about something like Assimil, which actually has translations of every lesson. I am wondering if I should keep powering through at one lesson per day or if I should perhaps allow myself two days for each lesson.

Pimsleur is going well though. A few of the criticisms I've heard of Pimsleur is that there is too much English and too many pauses while not enough of the target language and too few new words introduced in each lesson. Those criticisms are accurate, but it seems to me not really the point of Pimsleur. I am enjoying that it forces me to conjure up a sentence, remember the vocab, and construct the word order. I also like that it teaches how to use various terms and phrases in context. For example, Norwegians are constantly saying "ikke sant" ("not true?"), but I don't always know why or what it means in context. I think it's typically used in the way we would say "Don't you think?" And the most recent lesson gave several examples of that, which helped a lot.

I have also been watching the English and Norwegian versions of Vikingane/Norsemen. They filmed each scene in English and in Norwegian, so I will watch an episode in the Netflix English and then rewatch the episode in the NRK Norwegian. It is very enjoyable and I definitely get a way better understanding of what is going on after I've seen the English version. However, the Norwegian is somewhat difficult for me. By comparison, my wife is watching True Blood with Norwegian subtitles and the subtitles in that are so simple and easy by comparison. I don't know if it is just a mediocre translation or if the ideas in that show can just be expressed in simpler terms.

[jeff_lindqvist]

For example, Norwegians are constantly saying "ikke sant" ("not true?"), but I don't always know why or what it means in context. I think it's typically used in the way we would say "Don't you think?" And the most recent lesson gave several examples of that, which helped a lot.

If you're ever exposed to Swedish, you'll find the same kind of tag question, in several forms: ”inte sant” (lexically similar), ”eller hur”, ”va”, ”visst”, ”väl” ... always with same idea as the English have you?/doesn't she?/isn't she?/is he?/do I?/doesn't she?/isn't it?/couldn't they?/right?/etc.

<rant>
In another topic, the increased use of ”a bunch of” was discussed (and to some extent, frowned upon). These days, ”Eller hur!” is used as a statement. Call me a stubborn old dinosaur, but to me, that's one of the worst examples of modern Swedish.
</rant>

[dubendorf]

Oppdatering

Today, I completed Linguaphone lesson 29. Given the increase in difficult at this point in the book, I think I am going to start following Arguelles' advice and split it into two sessions per day. Rather than powering through a single 30 minute bolus of Norwegian, I will split it into one session where I do the shadowing of today's lesson and shadow yesterday's lesson for review. Then, I will do a separate session where I do the textual analysis of both today's lesson and yesterday's lesson.