150 hours of Norwegian
150 hours!! in a bit less than 3 months
I'm around B1. I would say I'm around intermediate low in speaking, the main thing holding me back is vocab. As far as comprehension, like, I am listening to news podcasts and reading history articles, i've gotta be somewhere in the intermediate high-advanced low range. (which is insane. it should not be legal to learn a language this quickly.)
What have I done since the last update?
Podcasts: all sorts of stuff from NRK :)
- Urix: usually pretty good, I typically have enough context to follow world news even if I miss some of the details
- Historiske kjendiser: again I get the general story but miss some details
- Abels tårn: this is the hardest thing I've seriously listened to, it's more conversational and they talk about random subjects and switch between subjects without super clear distinctions so I completely lose track of what's going on pretty easily
- Svindler i Guds navn: by far the easiest and clearest of them, somehow??
- Hele Historien: Alexander Kielland: i only listened to a bit and this one is mainly unscripted interviews so oh boy I got pretty much nothing
Shows and movies:
- Phineas and Ferb: pretty easy, good stuff to put on in the background while crocheting, I don't understand everything 100% because they do talk at medium speed, but it's easy to follow and fun
- Secrets of the Whales: they talk so slowly and clearly it's crazy. anyways i can understand everything and also a good background to crochet
- Little Mermaid, Mary Poppins, Night at the Museum, Aladdin: really very solid, medium difficulty because not as easy as the first 2 but I can make out most things
- Atlantic Crossing: proper norwegian show, I can totally follow the subtitles and understand pretty much everything with subs, but as with german shows they're talking some mean dialect that doesn't match the bokmål subs, so if I didn't have subs I would be pretty lost. (i mean seriously though, how long did it take before i was able to watch babylon berlin in german??? literally insane that i can watch an adult norwegian tv show after 2.5 months)
Reading: just found that the Lausanne library has a subscription to online magazines!!!
- Den Ultimate Guiden til Minecraft: very easy, I know enough about minecraft + it has pictures!
- Illustrert Vitenskap: Historie: usually pretty easy (the right level for me anyways). it's just a matter of specific vocab. sometimes i go a whole page of archaeology article not really knowing what we're talking about bc i don't know the most important word, but if i do know the subject of the piece than i totally can understand it all, maybe I miss a couple sentences a page.
- what is fun about magazines is there are new ones every month. like, i could never run out of magazines. and if i run out of magazines i just start reading them in other languages lol (indo magazines.......... !!!!)
NTNU norskkurs: still so beloved and good, I haven't made a ton of progress recently because school busy, but I'm almost done :,) once I finish I'll have to go back and review all the grammar from the top bc i have already forgotten it lol
Talking with norwegian friend
- it slaps
- i can have a real actual conversation
- it is still much harder than listening to something bc the pressure is higher, I need to understand all the words in the question or comment to be able to answer correctly. i think he also enjoys saying phrases to confuse me (though he is mostly nice)
- it is funny because half the time i say something right and think i'm wrong. and then sometimes i say something and he is like how do you possibly know that phrase and im like :) (usually the answer is german)
Next steps and future goals/plans
- get reading the magazines!!! ideally i can read a bit before bed :)
- continue watching shows and movies
- podcasts on the bus
- talk to friends :)))
- finish the NTNU norskkurs!
I said at 100 hours that I'd like to have 200 hours by the end of exam season. That's not going to happen, but it'd be reasonable to have 200 hours by the time I go home - that's a little less than 4 weeks from now, so I just have to average around 2h a day. It's not too hard to get 2h a day if I listen to a podcast or watch a show, and read some. Especially now that I have relatively a lot of free time.
Some weaker areas that will be good to focus on in the future:
- conversational norwegian? would be really good to learn to understand people talking to each other and over each other
- i'm sure once i leave the formal, mainly scripted podcast bubble, the dialects will get more wild (that's a later problem though)
- read more to get vocab :)
- just more speaking/writing practice since ofc like usual that's my weakness
- eventually it'd be good to finish the Lingohut vocab lists, there's not much to do there and they give some specific everyday vocab that I'm not likely to stumble upon elsewhere
Other thoughts
- i love europe they put so much free content online (specifically the public broadcasters) <3
- also omg bibliotheque de lausanne coming in clutch with the magazines!!! so exciting
- love letter to my favorite things: libraries and public broadcasting <3333
- it's also become WAY harder to speak german let me tell you. so next semester i'd probably like to work on german and swiss german some, and maybe indo (i'm excited about the magazines)
- if i can get like 100 hours of swiss german that should do the trick, it's not like it's even another language lol
- lots of shows in swiss german on RTS, just need to find some at the right level