Update #2

So I haven't posted in a few days because I've been helping my Dad do up his house and it was very tiring.
Anyway, now my plan for the next week is to have a proper look into NoW (Norwegian on the Web) and do a review. This is another free resource that I haven't actually used yet so I want to see if it stands up to the book courses and how it compares to other online courses.
Other things I have been doing to help my Norwegian have been listening to the radio and watching the Norwegian news on TV, but this has met with varying success! The podcasts KlarTale are pretty easy to understand as it's basically just a guy reading the news very slowly and clearly so it is good to get a feel for the rhythm of the language, but when you move onto watching the news, as you can on NRK you do notice a massive jump in the speed at which real news readers speak at. I did try the other day to watch the bulletin whilst doing housework and I repeated it a couple of times, but in all honesty at the moment a lot isn't really going in so it's more background noise at the moment. However, I think that is better than nothing as obviously you get the odd word and the more exposure you have to the language the better.
One good resource I used to use quite a lot is Lang-8, a website where you write something in the language you're trying to learn and someone corrects it for you. This is great as obviously you get to practice writing in the language and you get actual feedback on what you've written, which unless you're in a class you don't get normally.

That's it for now but check back for my experiences on NoW and anymore tips, sites and videos I come across over the next week!

Teach Yourself Norwegian 1967: The Old School Approach

One of the books which I have used quite a lot is the 1967 edition of Teach Yourself Norwegian. As you can probably guess, it uses the traditional grammar-translation method. Most modern courses are laid out by theme; chapter 1 normally covers introductions, chapter 7 might deal with food and restaurants etc. Not so here.

As you can see, it is organised by grammatical principle and the lesson is designed around that rather than a conversational topic. So the first lesson is all about nouns and includes the subtopics of the indefinite and definite article. For a lot of modern learners, this could be a bit difficult at first as most people don't have experience of learning languages in this way and it can seem quite technical, especially as chapter 3 has the rather esoteric title of "The S-Genitive". However, I found that after Duolingo, I really wanted more in depth grammar explanations. I found that, whilst it was great for vocabulary, Duolingo's approach of minimal grammar based around inferring the rules didn't work as well for me.  This is especially true for verbs. Fortunately, Norwegian verbs are a lot less complicated than, say, their French counterparts, they only have about five different forms and they don't change for person. However, in the past tense you have four different regular endings and a host of irregular verbs and no matter how many times I repeated the lesson on Duolingo, I never understood exactly how to tell what endings went on what verbs. Luckily, pages 28 to 50 are focused on verbs in this Teach Yourself book.

As you can see, it's very text heavy. There are actually no illustrations in the whole book, which might be a concern for visual learners. This is one of the larger lessons, and it follows a pattern of outlining the forms one of the classes of verbs, how to recognise what verbs fall into that class, then providing some translation exercises. Now, this is strangely where Duolingo and the traditional approach overlap. Duolingo is centred around translation, and whilst there are a few mix and match exercises, most of it is rote translation and so despite the modernity of the platform, it really isn't so different from what this series was doing. The main differences are that rather than a phrase or sentence at a time, here we have a short paragraph (top right). Also, rather than guessing as you go, here we have new vocabulary presented just before the passage (bottom left), and the text is aimed toward developing recognition of the forms that have just been explained. It is actually not as dry as it might seem; it is really encouraging when you find you can translate lengthy passages early on and of course the full translation is provided at the back of the book.

Of course, there are downsides to this course, not least of which is its age. The texts obviously make use of fairly archaic language in both the Norwegian and the English and colloquial language isn't really touched upon. Also, and I don't know if this relates to other books from this series, but I did come across a few editing errors, for example one of the exercises says "hun" and then the key at the back will try and tell you the answer is "he". If I hadn't already done some Norwegian on Duolingo then I imagine that causing a bit of confusion, though luckily I was able to pick it up.

So, does this book have any use for the student in 2015? I think it does. You don't want this as your only study book just because, as mentioned, the language is old fashioned and as far as I am aware there is no audio for it, both of which means that should you actually find yourself in Norway, you might find it hard to get yourself understood. With that in mind, however, and making use of other resources, I found it to be an excellent, thorough way to consolidate grammar. If you are a bit more academically minded and what a further challenge after Duolingo, I would definitely recommend giving this a go!

Note: I found my copy on amazon for £3

Ways to use Wikipedia to help you learn Norwegian

Wikipedia is possibly the greatest achievement of the Internet age, an unprecedented collection of freely accessible and democratically written information just sitting there, waiting to inform you about anything from particle physics to the history of ping pong. It's also a really great, if overlooked, way, to help you learn a language for free and it has so many great uses.

1.Learn vocabulary
If you're writing in your target language and you don't know a word, Wikipedia is a great way of finding it out without "cheating" by typing it into google. Because it takes a bit more work and comes with information and pictures, it is also a way of making sure it stays in your brain. So, to start off, say I want to know the Norwegian for "parsley". I'll start off by typing it into English Wikipedia. If you scroll down, on the side bar you can choose to read in another language. Select either Norsk bokmal or nynorsk (or really whatever language you are studying) and voila!

We now know that "parsley" is "persille".

2. Expand your vocabulary
But don't stop there! Carry on reading! Let's look at the first sentence:

Persille (Petroselinum crispum) er en toårig grønn krydderurt, før viltvoksende rundt Middelhavet, men nå stort sett kultivert

The first word I didn't know was toårig, and unfortunately this isn't one of the words linked to another article. No problem! Luckily, this is one of those Norwegian words you can split up to find its meaning. It ends in "-ig" which I recognise as an adjective ending. "to-" means "two", so that's easy, as is "-år-" which means "year". So we have two-year-[adj] = biennial (the Norwegian word is actually easier here!).

A lot of words though on Wikipedia are linked to other articles which will allow you to get the meaning by looking at pictures or even understanding a bit of the article. So the next word, "krydderurt," means absolutely nothing to me but I would guess that it's something to do with herbs. Click o it and the first sentence is:

Krydderurter (Ikke-systematisk gruppe) er spiselige urter der blad, stilk eller blomst inngår som naturlig aroma og/eller farge i mat og drikke

Remember, you don't have to get every word, you just want a general meaning and here we have "blad" which we know is leaf, "blomst", flower, "naturlig aroma"natural aroma/flavour "i mat og drikke" in food or drink. It's what we'd call in English a herb!

By doing this, it's encouraging you to think actually in the language; you're not relying on word for word translation but actually looking at the meaning of the words. If you pick a topic you're interested in and familiar with, you'll find you know more of the words anyway and the rest is just filling in the blanks.

3. Grammar tables
In all honesty, the wikipedia page for Norwegian isn't great compared to what you've got for really popular languages and even a massive step down from the other Scandinavian languages, but a lot of the time if you want a quick reference, Wikipedia is absolutely full of verb tables and noun paradigms that you just need to find.

If you go to the Norwegian language page and scroll to "morphology" then you can find quick descriptions of the rules for the patterns in table format:

Now, again, as far as languages go, it's all pretty basic for Norwegian, but it is still a good place to start should you need a quick run down. Always, always as well, check the external links, See also and sources at the bottom of the page. There's a link to an English-Norwegian dictionary, a Norwegian dictionary in both bokmal and nynorsk and a page to learn Norwegian. Of Wikipedia's own pages, there's a comparison of Danish and Norwegian which is an interesting read anyway if you're of a linguistic mind but especially useful if you're planning on studying more Scandinavian languages later.

4. Don't forget Wikipedia's sister projects!
The best ones for language learners are Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikitionary.

The Norwegian Wikisource has many Norwegian texts to look through when you've learnt a bit more of the language. You can find, for example, Roald Amundsen's account of the Norwegian expedition to the South Pole, the words to the Norwegian National Anthem and  crime novels by Stein Riverton. Wikisource is made up mostly of classical literature so won't be easy to read to begin with, but once you've studied for a while you may find it gets easier. The other project is Wikibooks, which contains textbooks. Their Norwegian book is in a very incomplete state but you could help out to make it better! At the moment there are quite a lot of tables as well as some rudimentary lessons.

Finally we have Wiktionary which is a great way of getting translations for words as well as finding declensions and conjugations. The Norwegian version can be found here.


It goes without saying you wouldn't be able to learn a language from Wikipedia alone, especially one with an article as short as the Norwegian one, but it's a great way of getting reading practice as well as strengthening vocabulary in a proactive way.

Et besøk

En av naboens katter besøkte moren mins hus da jeg studerte norsk der.

Hun stod på boken min og jeg kunne ikke skrive så jeg besluttet å ta meg en pause. Jeg rakte ut en hånd og strøk katten. Hun er dronningen av huset og det er ikke engang hennes hus!

 

Install and use a Norwegian keyboard on Windows

Once you've been learning for a while you are probably going to want to type the language at some point. This is always complicated by the fact that English is probably the ONLY language to use the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and nothing else. Every other language has at least one accent or diacritic to account for. Norwegian has three whole letters that don't appear on a standard keyboard. Luckily, in this day and age, it's actually pretty easy to install a keyboard layout and use it. The only tricky part is remembering the new layout. So here we go. For this article, I was using Windows 8, but the instructions are pretty standard throughout all Windows operating systems; I've been changing keyboards since XP and it's been the same throughout. However, for specific Windows 7 instructions, you can check out my guide for Czech I posted on an older blog a few years back.

Step 1: Locate the Control Panel

In Windows 8 you get there by dragging your mouse to the right edge of the screen and pull up the "charms". Settings is the bottom one and offers the option of the Control Panel. In all others the Control Panel is found through "My Computer" (and indeed is still there in Windows 8 as well). 

Step 2: Select the "Clock, Language, Region" Settings and go into "Language".

Select the option "Add Language".

Step 3: Select "Add a Language"(again)

Step 4: Scroll down the alphabetical list of languages and choose "norsk (bokmal)"...

... or nynorsk if you fancy. Then click on "Add".

Step 5: You're ready to go! To change keyboards, go down to the task bar and click on the "ENG". This is telling you your current language is English.

Step 6: Change your language by clicking on the (unfortunately labelled) "NOB" option. If you picked nynorsk earlier then I guess this will be "NON" for you.

Start typing!

A few points to remember

The Norwegian layout is similar to the English one with regards to letter placement, but punctuation is all over the place, as well as there now being three extra letters where we have the "[", ";" and "'" keys. See the diagram:

Take a minute to look at that, the punctuation throws me all the time. This is especially important when you're typing passwords! Remember to change back to your native language when typing these as it can just end up getting really frustrating the fifth time you carefully type it in only to realise the "@" sign is now typed with the "2" key. 

I hope this is helpful, I plan to do the same for iOS as well soon!

Duolingo Part 2: The Review

So here's the big one, my attempt at reviewing Duolingo Norwegian. In part 1 I told you about my own experience on Duolingo and how far it took me. Here, I am gong to look at how Duolingo works, reviewing its features and discussing how you can get the most out of it.

The Tree
Once you've signed up with Duolingo (a simple process, you can log in with facebook) and chosen your language, you are presented with this:

All the lessons are grouped into "skills"- the circles- and arranged in a "tree". From the start you are guided through your studies- you can't skip ahead unless you've already studied the language and pass a test- and the tree tells you exactly what you are going to learn and when. I personally think this is a great way of setting out a course. Everything is broken down into small topics and so, for example, you know that within the first ten lessons you'll have learnt names of some animals, how to talk about food, how to form the plural and some verbs. The fact you can see everything but not just rush ahead, as you could in a book, actually really encouraged me. I looked forward to learning about the arts and philosophy, which come quite late on, and so stuck the course out. If you're not into the arts, then there's skills on science, nature and fantasy, which was a really cool skill all about trolls and witches.

The skill icons change depending on your strength and how firmly it's planted in your brain. They turn coloured once you've unlocked them. Once their gold you've completed them and they're in your mind, though as you can see in the "Definites" skill, the strength bars start going down once you've left it for a while. This means you should go back and strengthen them. This is a really good aspect of the course, it actually lets you know what your weaknesses are and what you should revisit- just because you've finished a skill doesn't mean you can just forget it. For a lot of people, this is a bit of an obstacle in Duolingo, it's nice to have a gold tree and it takes a lot of work keeping it that way, but I think you can really use it to your advantage. Instead of just ploughing ahead, every time you start a session, before moving on, take time to revisit a past skill. This is especially important later on, when you're learning a lot of new words for some skills. It's fairly easy to keep the first twenty or so gold as they use a lot of vocabulary that overlaps with English, but later on you really need to keep it fresh in your mind to make the most of the later skills. Each skill consists of 2-10 lessons, each of which you need to pass to move on.

Lessons
Lessons consist of around 10-40 exercises but if you make mistakes, instead of sending you back to the start (as it used to- lose three hearts and you're out!) it simply extends the lesson, making you repeat certain words until you get them right.

That's an example of one of the early lessons and as you can see, it starts off quite simple. You simple have to select the picture of a woman, with the Norwegian written underneath. However, dn't be fooled, it gets more complicated:

Here, you're being asked to translate a full sentence of Norwegian using the words you've learned with the matching exercises, as well as introducing new vocabulary in the actual sentence. If you hover over the words, it gives you a translation. If you click on "Tips & notes" in the top left of the exercise, it brings up the grammar explanations for the unit. As you can see, there is a lot of support provided, but you quickly stop relying on the translations and start doing it yourself. This is a nice, rewarding way to learn- from the beginning you're dealing with actual sentences that you quickly learn to read and understand.

Other exercises involve listening and speaking. These can be a bit tricky as, for example, in the listening exercises the voice doesn't always pronounce things clearly and in the speaking exercises it might find your particular accent hard to understand, or, as I saw when my friend was studying French, you can just make an assortment of noises and it will congratulate you. As the voices are computer generated, you really do need to explore other options to get used to the sound of Norwegian, by watching videos or listening to the radio. This is possibly where Duolingo's biggest weakness lies, though from early on you're introduced to speech, this is limited. It's best to see this as a starting point, to here sounds in context, rather than a means in itself to become fluent at speaking and listening Norwegian.

What to do after Duolingo?
When you finish Duolingo, you might be asking yourself what do you do next? For the other, more popular, languages, you have the option of helping out with translating real texts, but this hasn't been rolled out to the new courses yet. Fortunately, there's a few options outside of the Duolingo world for you to look at and try. As I've said quite a lot, after finishing I had a lot of general ideas of the grammar floating around my head, but no organisation, and so for me I have been following various book courses. The ones I've found the most helpful are Colloquial Norwegian and Teach Yourself in its various editions. I've also been trying to watch videos and listen to the radio, but I am less disciplined when it comes to these two activities. Nonetheless, it definitely helps to hear Norwegian as it is actually spoken, outside of the context of the course.

When it comes to vocabulary, memrise is a really helpful website. It works on the flashcard concept, which is a feature notably lacking from the Duolingo Norwegian course but present in some of the others. Someone has even gone to the trouble of making a Duolingo course on memrise which brings together all the vocabulary from the course in a handy set of flashcards, all 2314 of them, organised according to the Duolingo Norwegian tree.

Of course, the best way to learn Norwegian is to... GO TO NORWAY! Unfortunately, this hasn't been an option for me yet but hopefully one day. I have heard that it can be quite difficult to get Norwegians to speak to you in their own language as they are taught English to a high level from an early age, but if you force yourself to stick with it, make a point of ordering in Norwegian and making yourself understood, then it should really help to get some proper exposure. This is nevertheless all hypothetical as I have yet to go to Norway, but it is definitely next up on my destination list!

Final remarks
The biggest positive about Duolingo, and this really cannot be stressed enough, is that it is free. I don't know of any other provider that has such a complete course for nothing, taking you from complete beginner to a good intermediate level in a short period of time. I think for a lot of people starting out in Norwegian, or any language Duolingo teaches, this really is the best way to begin. There are drawbacks, of course, and for the skills of listening and speaking especially, you will want to supplement your learning as you go. Try youtube videos where a native speaker gives you essential vocabulary or try fairytales where a lot of the simple vocabulary from the early Duolingo lessons will, again, be spoken by a real native speaker. Again, for grammar, after finishing the course I found it useful to consolidate what I had learnt with a "proper" course. This isn't to detract from the positives though. With so much vocabulary, you should be able to read at least simple newspaper articles, wikipedia pages on Norway, and simple stories in Norwegian. Don't let your journey stop once you've completed the tree, explore the language and make it your own.

Why Norwegian?

With around 5 million speakers, Norwegian might seem a rather bizarre choice of language to learn, especially by someone who has never even been to Norway. Here, I give my reasons for picking Norwegian:

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

Norge er et nordisk, europeisk land

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:

Geiranger

More of the famous Norwegian fjords

A Stave Church

Bergen

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.