100 hours of Norwegian
It's May 13. It's been 5 weeks and change since I started learning Norwegian. I've done exactly 100 hours. That is on average a bit more than 2.5 hours a day... I have a lot of free time.
What have I done since the last update?
- A bunch more NTNU lessons: https://www.ntnu.edu/now/ and https://www.ntnu.edu/now2/. They have SO MUCH it really slaps!!!
- Specifically I did the later exercises in NoW 1 for a quick review and now I'm halfway through NoW 2
- Slowly working through the Lingohut vocab lists, I think they're a good amount of random A2/B1 level vocab
- Watching Phineas and Ferb, a whale documentary, some of a movie (Wild Men), listening to lots of podcasts (mainly Lær norsk nå!, Historiske kjendiser, and a few random episodes of political podcasts)
- Read a norsk translation of a harry potter fanfic. It was 12k words and very simple to understand.
- Actually had interesting interactions with norwegian friend
Reflections and feelings
- NTNU lessons are the love of my life omg they're so comprehensive and perfect and amazing
- Listening it depends on what I'm listening to. But I totally can understand stuff at a B1 level. The whale documentary has very slow and clear narration and I can understand nearly everything. Lær norsk nå! is the same. Native level podcasts I can follow the overall conversation / story, but I miss a good amount of details. Phineas and Ferb they just talk quickly (it's been a couple days, I'm not sure how Phineas and Ferb stacks up to the native level podcasts). The movie was entirely incomprehensible if it hadn't been for the subtitles.
- Generally that makes a lot of sense: nonfiction is the clearest, followed by narrative stuff. And in native non-dubbed movies they're always mumbling and have accents and etc that are very hard. Native movies are final boss. Maybe only rivaled by group conversations and eavesdropping on people.
- The harry potter fanfic was super easy and clear. I'm sure that was primarily because I fully understand the context. Even if I hadn't read this exact one before, there's only so many things that can happen in a fanfic.
- I can't necessarily have a full conversation with norwegian friends, probably because the subjects I can talk about are fairly simple and not the kind of thing you would talk about to a friend (like I can say tons of introducing myself kinds of information but that's not necessarily the kind of thing you just pull out when you're walking down the street you know?). But I am certainly making a lot of progress, and I can understand most things he says (if he repeats on occasion and clarifies some words), and I can say interesting and relevant things back. If I properly tried, I could have a conversation mostly in Norwegian, I'm just lacking the vocab to talk in detail about most things.
- I would say I'm actually pretty solid novice high on most things and probably intermediate low at comprehension.
Plans and goals
- Work my way through NoW 2. When I get to the end, I can probably chill on the grammar for a while (though after a couple weeks I should come back and redo the grammar and exercises for practice).
- Watch and listen to lots of shows and podcasts
- Talk to friends
- Continue searching for something interesting to read
- I don't have the time to spend 2.5 hours a day on Norwegian now that it's crunch time, but I'd like to average an hour a day or so and just make sure to keep practicing. Because it really is just a matter of time and being consistent every day. My stretch goal is to have 200 hours by the end of exam season (average of 1.9 hours a day).
Other resources
- Search Disney+ by language: https://disdubs.io/