500 hours of Norwegian
I’ve been learning Norwegian for a bit more than a year now. I’m B1/intermediate mid. You can see my previous updates here.
Background
I started learning Norwegian last April because I have a Norwegian friend and no self control when it comes to starting new languages. I already speak English and German, so Norwegian is so easy it’s basically cheating :)
Exciting news: I'm moving to Norway in the fall! Bit of a funny story, this whole time I’ve tried to convince myself I didn’t want to move to Norway. PhD apps roll around, I can’t stop thinking about how nice it would be in Norway. So I’m thinking ok, I’ll look at their website, I’ll see that they don’t have anything interesting, how tragic, and then I can move on with my life. Unfortunately for my plans, they had something very interesting, so I had to apply. And then I got in. And now I am moving to Norway in the fall.
My goal is to B2 by August. Maybe a bit ambitious, but I don’t think I’m so far off. A low B2 anyway, and maybe a bit lower still in speaking, should be doable.
Where I am now
Comprehension, I’m more or less there. I can read novels and nonfiction. I can understand podcasts and audiobooks about most medium level topics. Difficult areas are still things in strong dialects and abstract/stream of consciousness style audiobooks. Movies/shows can be hard too when they mumble. Otherwise I think I’m at least a high B1 in comprehension.
Speaking and writing I need a lot more practice with. What I really need is to do an indo and speak Norwegian for an hour a day every day for a month. As is, I’m not too sure where I stand just because I haven’t done nearly enough. I can more or less hold a conversation with a friend and I can write journal entries without looking up too much vocab, so I guess I’m also pretty solid B1. I just need to write/speak a lot more to get more active vocab.
Vocab-wise, I passively know more than enough words. I just need to be able to produce them. I’ve also made an anki deck of every word in the dictionary lol, so I’m very set for the rest of time :)
Grammar, I’ve done and reviewed up through B1 stuff. I also have a B2/C1 level workbook that I’ll get around to sooner or later, but it’s not my top priority currently.
What have I done since the last update?
- Anki: finished the 6000 top words deck!
- 4500 words total learned!
- now I made a deck of all the words in the dictionary... based on https://enno.dict.cc/. then I go through and delete (1) all the words that are way too niche and (2) words in norwegian that I either already know or can guess the meaning of. Based on that so far, I should only have to learn ~7000 more words to know all of the words. A lot, but,,, doable. I'm not in a hurry on these though, I'll just try to keep up 5-10 new words a day. I'm only doing norwegian > english cards clearly, I'm not that insane ;)
- Book club: Heroin Chic, Doppler, and Genanse og verdighet. Doppler I really enjoyed, excellent break from the depressing stuff. Genanse og verdighet was very hard to follow but idk if it was me or if just nothing happened :,)
- Journaling: Trying to get back into journaling in general, and it's actually very doable in norwegian, just have to look up some vocab once in a while
- Shows: Ragnarok, a bit of Nattens Arvinger. Ragnarok is so good, right up my alley. Love Laurits so much <3 ... I was watching it with subtitles, but I mostly only needed them when ppl were talking in strong dialects, so not too bad. i'll need to try out some more shows, hopefully can find something else cool
- NTNU norskkurs: finally finished reviewing all of this!!!
- Sneen var ren: first book I've read and not heard on audiobook. once I seriously started reading, it took like 2 weeks to finish. was very fun, I understood basically everything
- Shadowing: I guess was one of my goals the last time, and I did a fair amount of it walking to/from work. I definitely think it helped improve my muscle memory for saying words and phrases and making the sounds! I would like to do some more of it, especially I think I could improve my intonation to sound a lot more natural
- I did finish my english book and french book and switzerland book too lol
- Got into NTNU. smh. this whole stupid time i've told myself I don't want to move to norway, and here we are, moving to norway.
Goals
Most important tasks
- get more active vocab
- write more, and make flashcards of vocab/phrases that I don't know
- probably go through vocab lists on https://www.norwegianclass101.com/norwegian-vocabulary-lists/ and make flashcards of any words i don't know well. I think I'm missing some of this concrete everyday vocab, or at least it won't hurt to review!
- writing/speaking practice
- keep a daily journal, as best i can
- make plans to talk with friends
Other to dos
- Read the german book so I can put it back in the book box
- Start on the grammar workbook, maybe
- Find another show to watch so I can make progress on the crochet project lol