Norwegian resources

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PeterMollenburg
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Norwegian resources

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Dec 13, 2015 2:45 am

I've been back to some old habits today. Instead of studying French I'm finding myself reading about Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. How on earth did that happen? It's certainly not my fault!

So I decided that if I were to learn one of these three languages, I would choose Norwegian. However, me being the type to enjoy doing courses, I've discovered that there aren't that many courses out there for Norwegian (and only marginally more for Swedish). I found an old Hugo in 3 months course, a Colloquial course, a well-rated TY complete course and some a couple other courses. Oh and Norvégien sans peine from a French base. Being spoilt for choice with French I'm not used to (but also not shocked) that there aren't that many courses for Norwegian out there. How does one make it beyond the intermediate levels - is there a good range of literature available in Norwegian? Are there many dictionaries (including apps) available?

Just curious mainly.

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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby aokoye » Sun Dec 13, 2015 3:21 am

I knew someone who used Ny i Norge when she lived in Norway and she really liked it. There's also På Vei.

My university uses Norsk, nordmenn og Norge but the main advantage of that for really anyone is that they have an ebook version of it which you can find from the publisher here. You can also buy MP3s of the audio. Oh the other thing is that there's a very good Memrise list for the first edition of På vei which is convient if you use Memrise (or even if you don't as there are ways to copy and paste it into a file and then upload it to Anki or another flashcard system).
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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:44 am

Also, Norwegian isn't that hard for an English speaker, so even without a lot of intermediate level courses, you should be OK. You could probably use native materials once you've finished with things like TY and Colloquial. I read a lot of Donald Duck then. That helped a lot.

The only really difficult aspect of Norwegian is the dialects. When I came here, I'd already been studying for a year on my own. At that point, I could read a bit, but I'd never spoken to anyone in Norwegian. (This was before Skype and such.) In the place I moved to, the dialect was so different from Bokmål that I almost wondered if I'd even studied the right language. I couldn't understand anything.

As for literature, there is quite a lot, considering the size of the population. Norwegians are very literate and they enjoy reading, and the government encourages the publication of books and periodicals. You might find it a bit expensive though. Norway is a very expensive country in general. However, the krone is weak now, so it's perhaps a good time if you want to buy stuff from Norway.
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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:43 am

Thanks aokoye and Brun Ugle...

My wife and I visited Norway in 2011 while we were staying in the Netherlands for some months. We really liked what we saw and it left a good on impression on us. It helped that we had friends living there at the time in Oslo who were kind enough to show us around and explain some of the culture, language, sights and so forth (one Australian friend, the other Norwegian). They moved back to Australia soon after our visit post 4 or 5 years in Norway. They are now considering moving back to Norway as they find Australia too much of a rat race. Interestingly, Norway often tops the quality of life index with Australia often in second or third position. In Norway, my friends feel there is time to more time to stop and smell the roses and the work-life balance there is still quite good. They even said with our Dutch learning background and being native English speakers that in view of France being a particularly tricky place to try to move to, they suggested Norway as an alternative option.

I entertain the idea from time to time but ultimately would prefer France. I would have to learn another European language to at least B2 level, which I would enjoy I admit, but it's more time- I think it's essentially turning my back on the ultimate prize (France) for an alternative that's not necessarily a walk in the park either. Note that I don't think France is any better than any other country, it's simply what (where) resonates with me personally.

Anyway today while doing some casual surfing online I was slightly more serious about learning Norwegian. Who knows, maybe some day I will. I know for now it's all French ahead, but Norwegian could be firmly finding a place on my to learn list.
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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby Expugnator » Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:55 pm

There are more than enough resources for Norwegian up to an upper-intermediate level, especially when one is a native English speaker and finds cognates through all registers. If you really think about going for it later, let me now and I'll dig my list of resources from my old log at HTLAL. There are several high-quality monolingual textbooks that become acessible once you've finished Hugo, Assimil and a few others (the best still being "Learn Norwegian"), like Brun Ugle said.
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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:49 pm

Expugnator wrote:There are more than enough resources for Norwegian up to an upper-intermediate level, especially when one is a native English speaker and finds cognates through all registers. If you really think about going for it later, let me now and I'll dig my list of resources from my old log at HTLAL. There are several high-quality monolingual textbooks that become acessible once you've finished Hugo, Assimil and a few others (the best still being "Learn Norwegian"), like Brun Ugle said.


Cool, thanks Expug. I will be sure to call on you if/when I take the plunge!
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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby sjintje » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:49 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:is there a good range of literature available in Norwegian?


Last time I was browsing in Foyles, I noticed Norwegian and Danish novels were generally 20+ quid, while the Swedish ones were mostly under a tenner.

I like Erlend Loe (in translation)
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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby d4ngerd4ys » Wed Jun 08, 2022 4:59 pm

Expugnator wrote:There are more than enough resources for Norwegian up to an upper-intermediate level, especially when one is a native English speaker and finds cognates through all registers. If you really think about going for it later, let me now and I'll dig my list of resources from my old log at HTLAL. There are several high-quality monolingual textbooks that become acessible once you've finished Hugo, Assimil and a few others (the best still being "Learn Norwegian"), like Brun Ugle said.



hi could i possibly have the list of norwegian resources? im having difficulty finding any that are actually helpful in learning the language and its extremely frustrating as i really would like to learn norwegian. its been a good few years and it looks like the thread is no longer active, but its worth a try asking anyways.
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Re: Norwegian resources

Postby rdearman » Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:24 pm

d4ngerd4ys wrote:
Expugnator wrote:There are more than enough resources for Norwegian up to an upper-intermediate level, especially when one is a native English speaker and finds cognates through all registers. If you really think about going for it later, let me now and I'll dig my list of resources from my old log at HTLAL. There are several high-quality monolingual textbooks that become acessible once you've finished Hugo, Assimil and a few others (the best still being "Learn Norwegian"), like Brun Ugle said.



hi could i possibly have the list of norwegian resources? im having difficulty finding any that are actually helpful in learning the language and its extremely frustrating as i really would like to learn norwegian. its been a good few years and it looks like the thread is no longer active, but its worth a try asking anyways.

You might want to check out some links on the old HTLAL site. They are old, but might still be available.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... ?TID=41258
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... p?TID=1819

If you do find some live links, could you please past them back here? That would allow the thread owner (or me as the admin) to update the first post with the links.

So other links I found.

https://www.ordnett.no/ To translate from Norwegian to English, Spanish, German and French.

http://lexin.udir.no A Norwegian monolingual dictionary

https://jeroenpelgrims.com/learning-nor ... resources/
https://www.reddit.com/r/norsk/comments ... ful_stuff/
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