1. It is probably the easiest language for English speakers
We often hear about how German is so close to English, how the words are so similar and how, millennia ago, they were one and the same. I have always thought this was a bit of a far-fetched claim. Yes, they descend from the same ancestor but so what? Personally, I've always found French words reveal themselves much more readily than their German counterparts, probably because after the Norman conquest so much of our vocabulary was taken over as well. A few centuries before the Normans though, the Vikings took over large parts of England and gave us so many basic words. Are, cake, egg, till (unTIL), they... all these words come from Old Norse and are still recognisable in Norwegian. This, as well as the shared family background, means that such basic phrases as
Jeg kommer fra England
or
are readily understandable to an English speaker. The grammar of all the Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Danish and Swedish) has followed a similar pattern to English: the declensions have been lost, the conjugations have been simplified and the old genitive is now a clitic 's' showing possession. Of course, there are many differences as well in areas such as word order, but personally I have found these a lot easier to cope with than the various differences between English and German.
2. The Scandinavian languages are often described as "mutually intelligible".
I am not going to make the claim that it's three languages for the price of one, that would be vastly underestimating the differences between the three languages, but it is true that native speakers of the Scandinavian languages can understand each other to a great extent as they share a lot of vocabulary and the grammar is often very similar. Out of the three, it is the Norwegians who often understand the other two languages the best, as well as being better understood by the others than, say, a Swede understands a Dane. For a foreign learner, however, understanding spoken Danish is a whole other story! Nevertheless, you can often get a general idea of what a Swedish and Danish text is talking about from your knowledge of Norwegian. To get fluent, you will need to study them properly, of course, but Norwegian gives you the best foundation possible in them. Icelandic is, though, an entirely different ball game and you will basically be starting from scratch!
3. Norway is one of the most beautiful destinations on Earth.
I'll let the pictures do the talking for this one:
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| Geiranger |
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| More of the famous Norwegian fjords |
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| A Stave Church |
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| Bergen |
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| Stortinget- the Norwegian parliament- in Oslo |
4. Learning about a different culture.
This is often the reason cited for learning a language and it's a great reason- no matter what language you study, you're being given the opportunity to see the world through new eyes. Norwegian is especially fascinating as a foreign language as it is at once an ancient and very modern country, in Europe but not in the EU, independent and the centre of the Viking world but experienced many years of foreign domination under the Swedes and Danes. Its history has affected the language as well- Bokmal, the most used of the official standards, derives to a large extent from Danish, which explains the similarity in writing, but it preserves the Norwegian pronunciation, which is closer to Swedish. Nynorsk, the other standard, is an attempt at preserving the dialects of the countryside and this debate between the two sides has driven Norwegian language policy. Norway gave us one of, if not the, greatest playwrights of the 19th century- Henrik Ibsen, as well as one of its greatest painters- Edvard Munch. With any language comes a wealth of memories and stories and Norwegian is no different.
I hope this inspires you, if not to learn Norwegian then maybe to pick up another language just because you want to. All languages are worth studying no matter how small and especially with the Internet, language learning has never been more accessible.
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