After lots of reading on the forum, on reddit, & blogs (and special thanks PM & all who contributed in his logs), here's what I've chooses as primary resources for the November 2020 6WC:
- a couple of textbooks since I thrive in academic situations
- Pimsleur for taking walks ostensibly on the phone with my imaginary foreign friend
- some electronic options because glowing screens make me happy.
- (coming in the next post: my weird strategy for n+1 comprehensible input for ultra-beginners)
Norsk, Nordmenn, og Norge
A thick old-school textbook, lots of black & white pages full of text, a style I thrive on. It has an audiolingual feel, with tons of written exercises and audio drills. The textbook chapters are entirely in Norwegian, but there’s a compact grammar in the back plus a glossary to define all that mysterious vocab.
The workbook's early computer typesetting enhances the vintage feel; there are different kinds of exercises with grammar pages at strategic intervals. One wants to be sure to get the 2nd edition of the workbook as it includes an answer key and transcripts of the audio drills at the end.
There's also a second level textbook & workbook called Antologi, which I don't have, but the name suggests plenty of reading (& more exercises) in there, but there don't seem to be audio files for the second Antologi level. A functioning audio file purchase link for the first volume was difficult to find (the easy to find one is broken), so I'll append it here:
https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart2/Chicagobook?PRESS=wisconsin&ISBN=978-0-299-08805-7
The Secret of Nils
OK, I'm game to check out a story-based textbook theoretically more amusing than the standard language course. It's a modern style of textbook, antithesis of N, N, & N, with lots of colorful pictures and grammar diagrams. The grammar sections are short, clear, and often amusingly illustrated. One can listen to the audio online free, but you gotta pay to download or buy a CD. There's a second volume for this one too, which, guessing by its name, Mysteriet om Nils, appears to be entirely in Norwegian. Wheee!
https://soundcloud.com/skapago/sets/learn-norwegian-with-a
https://www.skapago.eu/nils/audio/
Pimsleur Norwegian
Our library doesn't have this one, but given my massive Pimsleur borrowing history, I guess it's time to share the wealth (extend my poverty?). I'll be getting this one from Audible once this month's credit arrives (on the 5th, I think? ). Pimsleur only has two levels in Norwegian, with 30 lessons each, and they cost 5 credits per level on Audible. Ouch! And I'm infuriatingly a single credit short And credits can only be purchased in threes So I've just got to wait for this month's to arrive, sigh
ETA: Cool news! The friend/ex-roomie I'm house&cat sitting for is sending me some nice Bluetooth earphones that will make this walk&talk plan much nicer! (they're really because he likes talking on the phone while taking walks, and wants me to be like him--I much prefer video chat, which he hates!)
Memrise
Duolingo's level of gamification drives me mad, but I work very well with Memrise. I'm going to start giving them money again as I enjoyed the Learn with Locals videos when I had them last, and appreciate having all the other study options available as well. They also have decks for books like Nils, Teach Yourself, and one of the NoW courses below.
https://app.memrise.com/courses/english/norwegian/
https://app.memrise.com/home/
Norwegian on the Web by NTNU
There are 3 versions of the basic course, plus one of level 2, and they're all free!. The third version of the basic course is the same as the 2nd one, only in a Northern dialect. With all they offer here, this will probably drift toward my looser n+1 category, but we'll see, since they do have interactive exercises which tend to amuse me well.
https://www.ntnu.edu/learnnow/info/toc
https://www.ntnu.edu/now/info/toc
https://www.ntnu.edu/nowin/info/toc
https://www.ntnu.edu/now2/info/innhold
ETA CALST
A pronunciation tutor, also free!: I'll just quote the website for this one: "The Computer-Assisted Listening and Speaking Tutor (CALST) is a pronunciation training platform which currently offers exercises for English and for Norwegian. CALST will help you to acquire a basic vocabulary of 1000 words and expressions."
https://calst.hf.ntnu.no
My sense is that right now I need to start with lots and lots of audio then connect it with text, to get a better feel for pronunciation. My brain sees how Norsk text looks so similar to English, so then that vexing inner voice pronounces it entirely wrong, like mutant German maybe??? No no no no no bad stop!
So I should probably postpone all those lovely tempting written exercises in the Norsk, Nordmenn og Norge books (yeah I like weird fun), until I stop hearing written Norwegian entirely wrongly when I see it on the page. Fortunately N, N & N has plenty of audio drills as well, which are great for my purposes, and NoW also has audio drills available for download too. It's a little frustrating that I won't I'll have enough credits for Pimsleur for a week, though.
And I've collected a bunch of supplementary material for my ultrabeginner n+1 but that will be in my next post.
ETA: I've also set up my time tracking spreadsheet, so I'm ready to go!