Philipp's Super Challenge Log [EN, ES, NO]

[Philipp]

@Mista

Thank you so much for the correction. I'm going to need a little time to ponder on it. I'm sure many things I wrote sound awkward. Actually, when I wrote the post yesterday it became clear to me that I really should start reading more to get an idea on how to express things more naturally. All I can do now is translate literally from German or English and hope for the best. I'm a little embarrassed about the many mistakes I made with the infinitive/present form. That's something I actually know or at least should know by now. Besides, it's not really that difficult.

And yes, prepositions. I'm pretty confused about them, sometimes even in my native language. Interestingly, “Ideen bak ordet er vakker.” works perfectly in German and English as well, but it never crossed my mind to use bak. Your explanation for av, til was very helpful. I think I understand the difference now.

Aside from ordskatt, it's surprising to me how often literal translations between Norwegian and German words work or how closely related the languages are. Recently, I came across the word utstyr and it reminded me immediately of Aussteuer, which means something like dowry. When I looked it up, one of the definitions was a term for bed sheets, towels, etc. which is exactly what a Aussteuer traditionally consists of. The dictionary even mentioned wedding in the example sentence. I understand that the word is generally used much broader, but this almost can't be a coincidence. (I'm not going to ask if utskatt is a word. ) Then, out of curiosity, I looked up dowry and it's nearly the same word as in German: Mitgift, medgift. Not particularity useful words in 2018 but it's still nice to know. BTW, Mitgift is the only German word I can come up with in which -gift doesn't mean poison but is used in the sense of giving like in avgift, utgift. These connections make learning Norwegian fun for me.

[Philipp]

First post in 2019. Brace yourselves. I signed up for the Output-Challenge and I’ve to catch up, so this post will be loooooong.

Where to start best? Probably with French which is the language I want to start learning in 2019. Over the holidays I borrowed the Assimil French course at my local library. I’ve never used Assimil before and thought what better language than French to try it out. In the end, I had only made it to lesson seven, before I gave it back, though not for the quality of the course itself. I actually liked it much better than the other language courses I’ve seen so far. The problem was that the audio didn’t match the text in the book. I think the library packed the CDs of an older version with the book. The difference wasn’t that big, but as an absolute beginner in French, it still irritated me. The other reason was that I’m not willing to invest that much time in French at the moment to do the course properly. I could’ve kept the course for two months, but I realized that that is not enough time to finish it. I knew that you are supposed to do one lesson a day, but I thought maybe I could be quicker. Realistically, I’ll certainly need the 100 days. Therefore I decided to dabble in French for now to get a rough idea of how the language works. I’m going to use free resources, the usual suspects, but mainly duolingo and keep my eyes open for a used version of French without toil. If I learned anything from my first year of language learning it is that you have to be in it for the long run. Thus properly starting now or in a few months, when I feel more on solid ground in Spanish and Norwegian won’t make a big difference.

For the next couple of months, I want to focus more on Spanish which I neglected a bit. I recently finished Estoy Vivo and I’m actually getting better at understanding Spanish. Sometimes I have the feeling, I make up my own version of the dialogs instead of really understanding what is been said. On the other hand, I’m not that creative. The show was fun, though at the end of the second season the whole family drama got a little repetitive. My next project is listening/reading El simbolo perdido. Initially, I wanted to listen to El nombre de la rosa. I have the Spanish audiobook and the German print version, but I couldn’t do it. Reading in German while listening to Spanish was very confusing and I ended up understanding neither. I think, Dan Brown’s style is more matter of fact, and thus easier too read.

When I brought the French Assimil course back to the library I borrowed the Spanish one. I was actually tempted to take the French, Spanish and Norwegian version on my first visit, but then decided that it would be a little unfair to the fellow language learners in my city to stock three courses on my desk when I only have time to work with one. So far I made it to lesson 16. To make it a little harder I’m transcribing the dialog on the first round of listening. I’m also trying to concentrate on pronunciation, something I previously paid too little attention to.

In Norwegian I finished the latest season of Side om side and watched a children’s show called Julekongen over Christmas. Julekongen (the Christmas King) was really fun to watch. It reminded me, at times, of Fargo because of the snowy landscape and how it is filmed. The mother of the young hero also has some similarities to the police officer in the original movie.

Yesterday I finished my first Norwegian novel, Rødstrupe by Jo Nesbø, which is the third in the Harry Hole series. Initially, I wanted to start with the first novel but then I found a good offer for five used Jo Nesbø novels shipped from Germany and ordered them. I’m reading slowly and I’m far from understanding everything, but enough to follow the plot comfortably, so I’m quite content. The half Super-Challenge I signed up for seems doable now. My reading comprehension in Norwegian might even be better than in Spanish. I’ve said this a couple of times before, but knowing German is a huge benefit. Sometimes I can guess words, I wouldn’t even know in English. Also, I encountered the word sølepytt (mud puddle) again. I one of my earlier post about Norwegian it mentioned jokingly that I learned the word from watching Peppa Pig. Lo and behold, in one scene Harry Hole, his girlfriend and her son go on an excursion and walk around mud puddles. (Peppa obviously would have jumped right in.)

And finally English. I signed up for the Output Challenge and I’m trying really hard to make this post as long-winded as possible in order to catch up with the word count, I should have reached by now. I was a little unsure whether I should participate in the challenge or not. I like the idea of being a better writer or a more eloquent speaker, but I’m not so sure if I’m willing to invest the time. For the challenge, I plan to write mostly by hand in a journal. My goal is mainly to write more spontaneously in a casual register. I don’t need to use English professionally, so there’s little purpose for me to practice formal writing.

For the speaking part, I intend to work on my accent before I do anything else. I decided to go for a general American accent. I think my accent now is a mixture of American and British because I learned British English (or something resembling it) in school, but my idea of how English should sound is mostly influenced by countless hours of American TV. I wish I would sound like the actors in those old movies with their American, RP mixture. But if anything, my accent is more like a transatlantic accent spoken by Hans Gruber after one too many German beers. Luckily, I found a good free resource for General American pronunciation. It’s a podcast from the site pronuncian.com . Right now I’m practicing the American R. (Honestly what is it with these r sounds. How many ways r there to pronounce this stupid letter.) Let’s see how it goes. I might post a sample to get some feedback if I’m brave enough.