50 hours of Norwegian
I started learning Norwegian the 4th of April. It's been 20 days. I've reached 50 hours.
Goal: learn some norwegian so I can say silly things to my norwegian friends
What have I done so far:
- Mango Languages course
- I'm most of the way through the NTNU course (https://www.ntnu.edu/learnnow/)
- Podcasts: Norsk for Beginners and Lære Norsk Nå!
- I've looked through some vocab lists on here: https://www.lingohut.com/en/l87/learn-norwegian
- A couple episodes of Phineas and Ferb and Bluey
- Talking to friends and not understanding what they say back :)
Reflections and progress
- I can for the most part understand both of the podcasts. They are slow enough and generally use simple vocab. Depends on the topic, sometimes I understand everything and sometimes I am pretty lost and can only generally follow the gist.
- Phineas and Ferb, now that I've seen 3 episodes I think I've gotten a hang of the speed. Or at least, each episode is easier than the previous one. The two challenges are the speed at which they speak, and the vocab. But again, sometimes we go what feels like whole scenes where I understand everything. And sometimes they have a conversation without much context and I don't understand at all.
- I just read some opinion pieces on Klar Tale and a couple encyclopedia entries, and like, I can totally read simpler nonfiction stuff. Again, depends on if I have context or not, but if I have the context then I can totally understand.
- Me actually saying stuff is rough because I don't have enough vocab and I haven't really internalized the basic words yet. I can make plenty of simple sentences if I can remember the words I know :)
- Understanding friends is a challenge
- Mumbling and pronunciation
- Lack of context - like he can just say any kind of nonsense he wants and I will not know what he is talking about
- I just need to understand more in a conversation. Listening to a podcast or a show it's fine if I understand every other sentence, I can still understand what's going on. But if asks me a specific question, I kinda do have to understand all the words in the question to figure out what I'm supposed to answer
- Speed, I can't always follow fast things yet
- I'm pretty burnt out of Anki at the moment. Luckily I have tons of other things I can do, and I don't think Anki would especially help at the moment anyways.
- Norwegian really slaps, big fan of the lack of conjugation, big fan of easy. Unfortunate amount of grammatical gender but that's bearable ig. Silly vowel sounds that are not sufficiently clear when I hear them (those will be fine when I learn enough words to actually follow and have context though). Stupid podcast making me think that Norway sounds really nice. I do not want to live in Norway!!! it is too cold! sigh
Next steps
- Finish NTNU course
- Podcasts
- Phineas and Ferb
- Looking over the vocab list website
- Read things if I'm particularly motivated
- Talk to friends >:)
Maybe in the future:
- Read through the NTNU pdf and the grammar summary
- Practice answering icebreaker questions
Resource list
- NTNU course: https://www.ntnu.edu/learnnow/info/toc
- Sounds and pronunciation: https://pygmalion.hf.ntnu.no/
- Podcasts: Norsk for Beginners and Lære Norsk Nå!
- Picture books with audio: https://barneboker.no/
- Kids short stories: https://www.barneforlaget.no/les-eventyr
- Fairy tales: https://folkeeventyr.no/
- News in simple language: https://www.klartale.no/
- Encyclopedia: https://snl.no/
- Vocab lists: https://www.lingohut.com/en/l87/learn-norwegian