Norwegian: Naiv Super + some other resources I found

[Montmorency]

A trip to Norway has helped me to revive my interest in Norwegian.

When I was first looking at Norwegian, and later Danish, a few years ago, someone recommended "Naiv Super" by Erlend Loe as a good book for starting readers, as it is written in a literally naive style, with relatively simple sentences. I neve got around to reading any Scandinavian version of it at that time, but I did read it in English and German, and read another of his books in German.

I thought I'd look at what Amazon.co.uk had in Norwegian, and found this interesting version of "Naiv Super" aimed specifically at English speaking learners:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Naiv-Super-Nels ... 74&sr=1-33

Naiv. Super.: Volume 1 (Nelsbok) (Norwegian) Paperback – 4 Sep 2015

Naiv. Super. is a story, naively yet poignantly imagined, about a young Norwegian man who suddenly finds himself in a crisis. To discover what's going on--and to rediscover himself--he drops out of his studies at the university, sells most of his belongings, and moves into his brother's unoccupied apartment. Through contemplation and play, he sorts through life's meanings, tries to gain perspective on the world, revisits his lost childhood, and becomes obsessed with the concept of time. After several weeks, he joins his brother for a vacation in New York City, where, with his brother's help, he finds how best to live life. The side-column glossary and Norwegian-to-English dictionary compiled exclusively for this book make this edition of Loe's original text ideal for language learners and lovers of Norway and Norwegian culture.

Judging by the pages one can read online, it looks a bit like some graded readers I have seen, with explanations on each page for some words on each page, but by no means all. This is quite an interesting alternative to parallel texts, as it means you are pretty much forced to work out some of the words/expressions from context, and you may have to look some things up, but at least you are probably not having to look up every word. So you are given help, but you aren't handed everything on a plate, so to speak. Psychologically, this seems a good approach to me, and it helped me a lot when I was using graded readers in Welsh. This is not actually a graded reader, since it is a full version of the book (I assume), but as already mentioned, the original is written in a simple style which should be accessible to the beginner who has some grasp of the basics already, and mainly wants to increase vocabulary.

...


Completely unrelated, I happened upon this page of links to various Norwegian resources, which I pass on to anyone who might be interested:

http://norsknett.typepad.com/my_weblog/ ... egian.html

...

If there are any other learners (or like me, re-starters) of Norwegian on the forum, I would be interested in hearing from you. Maybe we can pool ideas, especially, suggestions of books/audiobooks to read/listen to.

[Montmorency]

Another list of Norwegian resources:

http://jeroenpelgrims.com/learning-norw ... -resources

May not have been updated for a while, but those I checked were still there.

[Montmorency]

There is a downloadable audiobook of Naiv.Super read by the man himself at

https://www.tanum.no/_lydboker/lydboker ... 8202313210

(I actually got to that via http://digitalbok.no )

And it's in MP3 format.

There are several other books there by him in various formats, and I notice there are some Jussi Adler Olsen "Department Q" books, apparently in Bokmål Norwegian. I have previously read some of these in English, German, and started L-R-ing them in Danish some while back, so it will be interesting to try at least one in Norwegian.

Edit: www.ark.no is a possible alternative source.

[tangleweeds]

I'm collecting Norwegian resources! It's been riding the top of my wanderlust list for months now. I've never studied a Germanic family language, and all my Norwegian friends are awesome and speak wonderfully musical English. These are logical reasons for studying a language, right??

Realistically though, I'm spread really thin, and what I should look at is a very basic level course to use as phone/tablet/web entertainment. Has anyone been dipping a toe into the shallow end of Norwegian? Is the Duolingo Norwegian course out of beta? Is there an actual Memrise course, not just another vocabulary deck, but one where they use all the different features that make you build sentences, type things in correctly, etc? What's the Mango language courses like? My library offers that.

[Montmorency]

I'm collecting Norwegian resources! It's been riding the top of my wanderlust list for months now. I've never studied a Germanic family language, and all my Norwegian friends are awesome and speak wonderfully musical English. These are logical reasons for studying a language, right??

Realistically though, I'm spread really thin, and what I should look at is a very basic level course to use as phone/tablet/web entertainment. Has anyone been dipping a toe into the shallow end of Norwegian? Is the Duolingo Norwegian course out of beta? Is there an actual Memrise course, not just another vocabulary deck, but one where they use all the different features that make you build sentences, type things in correctly, etc? What's the Mango language courses like? My library offers that.

No experience of Duolingo/Memrise & never heard of Mango.

This one was in one of those lists I posted, and looks reasonably "shallow end":

http://norwords.com

For myself, I'm thinking of getting a 2nd hand copy of the Colloquial book, as an alternative to the TYS and still in the fairly traditional style. They have a fairly good reputation, and the audio may be available free for download on their website. (It is for some of the languages - or was).

[Speakeasy]

I'm collecting Norwegian resources!

A few moments ago, I conducted a G-search on the HTLAL using "Norwegian" as my search criterion which yielded a staggering 3,700 discussion threads for a language reputed to be "less popular." I skimmed rather quickly over the first few hundred titles of which the following three caught my attention:

Norwegian Profile
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=181&PN=1&TPN=4

Scandinavian/Nordic Language Resources
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=19352

Best Sources to Learn Norwegian
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=33061&PN=31&TPN=1

[Montmorency]

Thanks Speakeasy. Yes, I remember the Scandinavian languages being discussed quite a bit there at one time. HTLAL is still a great resource (although I sometimes forget about it), while it continues to be available.

[Montmorency]

Found (by chance, as often happens) the website for the publisher who produce the learner's edition of Naiv.Super:

http://nelsbok.com/publications/naiv-super/chapter-01/

You can read the first chapter online.

There is also a book called: Jernvognen (by Stein Riverton):

http://nelsbok.com/publications/jernvognen/chapter-01/

This is done in the same way.

And finally, "The Iron Chariot", which I think is an English translation of Jernvogn.

I was able to get the Naiv.Super book via Amazon UK. Not so with the other two apparently, so would have to order via Nelsbok directly, which is not quite so convenient.

[daegga]

For those reading on a Kindle, Tolino or Kobo, there is a free popup-dictionary available at http://www.heinzelnisse.info/download. It works surprisingly well, much better than many paid ones for other languages pairs, but it's Bokmål -- German.

[Montmorency]

I received my Nelsbok edition of "Naiv.Super" yesterday.

It looks to be a good quality book, nice and clear printing, and plenty of space to make notes if you want to (although I am one of those who hates writing in books). On each page there is a column on the right with vocabulary explanations, on average about 10 items per page. At the back there is about a 40 page dictionary. It looks like it will be an interesting read.

Intriguingly, at the back, it says "Printed in Great Britain by Amazon", which suggests that it is a print-on-demand. If that's the case, it would be really good if the other two books that Nelsbok currently do were also available that way (although they aren't being shown on Amazon UK), which would save ordering from the USA.