Resources

Here are all the resources that I have used, including books, websites, apps and videos. Let me know if you have come across anything I haven't!

Websites

Reference

  • Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok - basic dictionary site.
  • UCL Norwegian Grammar Pages - A lot of information including irregular verbs, noun declensions and the various uses of the prepositions. Not a lot of detail but definitely a good place for an overview.

Complete courses

  • Duolingo - the most popular learning platform on the Internet released a Norwegian course a few months ago, which I whizzed through. Probably the easiest way to begin, especially if you haven't done languages in a while. You can read about my experience here.
  • Norwegian on the Web - tons of stuff here. A full course that you can follow from start to finish with audio and activities, there's also a grammar guide and a load more downloads. 
  • FSI Norwegian - The Foreign Service Institute language courses are now in the public domain and this is a free and complete-if a little dated- language course. Not the most fun to follow on your own but definitely worth checking out. 

Vocabulary

  • Memrise - flashcard website aimed at teaching vocabulary. There is a complete set of vocabulary learnt in the Duolingo Norwegian course and so it is a good complement to that. There are also loads of other courses so worth exploring. 

Games and Activities

Videos

News in Norwegian

  • Nyheter i bilder - Newsin pictures, this is great for people just starting out as it's very simple and gives symbols for every word so you can work out the meaning of unknown words without using a dictionary.
  • Klar Tale - Simple Norwegian news.

Books

Complete Courses

  • Colloquial Norwegian, Kari Bråtveit, W Glyn Jones and Kirsten Gade (Routledge 1995) - This is the one I went to after getting on for a while with Duolingo. The Colloquial series is often described as more academic than Teach Yourself, but all the books vary in their methods. It has since been updated, this is just the one that I have used.
  • Teach Yourself Norwegian: Complete Norwegian, Margaretha Danbolt-Simons (Teach Yourself 2012) - I bought the "enhanced ebook" from amazon for the bargain price of £10.99, complete with the audio. Starts off quite easy but starts introducing a lot of vocabulary early on. If you take your time with the dialogues and absorb all the new words, you should get a lot out of it.
  • Teach Yourself Norwegian (1967 edition), Ingvald Marm and Alf Sommerfelt (The English Universities Press 1967) - This is the old school Teach Yourself which I have had a lot of fun with. Pretty heavy grammar-translation method approach which nonetheless some people get on with.

Dictionaries

  • Berlitz Norwegian English dictionary - decent enough pocket dictionary of 12,000 terms each way. Very simple, glossary-like definitions.

No comments:

Post a Comment