Life carries us, indeed.

So yesterday I arrived from Norway. What a journey! I learned a lot. People were friendly and I could follow much of what they were saying. It felt quite fine, actually. Swedish and Norwegian are similar.

What did I learn? 

Rolig that in Swedish means fun, means in Norwegian calm.
Instead of inte (not) one uses ikke in Norwegian.
Jente means girl.
By is city in Norwegian but in Swedish it means village.

There are plenty of words that are different. Most of the words have a different spelling even though the pronunciation might be quite close.

People from Trondheim have a much more confusing pronunciation that from Oslo. People who come from North Norway are easier to understand.

I also learned that Norwegians are much more straightforward then the Swedish people. I actually like that a lot, even though it might be difficult at times. All the people in Norway were very nice to me. I enjoyed my stay so very much that I felt my self like being at home.

Today I met two Norwegian women just here in my village in Sweden. One of the women is probably renting a room at our flat so I could start to learn every day. She is a Norwegian teacher and even has previous experience with foreigners. She has not yet moved in...

Anyway. I have also written to a famous Norwegian scientist Nils Christie, who during seventies wrote a book called: "If the school did not exist". I wrote to him a month ago in English and he has answered in Norwegian.

Takk for interessant brev. Du skriver på engelsk, men av innholdet antar jeg at du også forstår skandinavisk.
Jeg har skrevet litt om skole i det siste, og vedhenger det her. Forhåpentligvis er noe av det av interesse.  
Tilgi det sene svar, det skjer litt for mye rundt meg akkurat nå.
De beste hilsener,

So I got three articles all in Norwegian from him that I now plan to read and translate with my new teacher. Isn´t it wonderful?

The very first lesson in Norwegian

Today I start my blog where I plan to publish everything I find about how to study Norwegian. I already have a similar page about how to study Swedish.

Since Swedish and Norwegian are quite similar languages I feel much more enthusiastic about the time frames. I have come a long way with my Swedish. During three years I have learned to speak and write like mediocre Swedish person does. Is that enough? I can read everything also philosophy and poetry. That feels great!

Now I plan to work in Norway for some years and therefore I must learn the next Nordic language (by now I can Finnish and Swedish). I like to learn languages, it is no problem for me. My aim is to be able to say simple sentences within couple of weeks (within a month) and learn to understand the pronunciation. On the first of June I´ll come back to this. (I hope I´ll remember of course!). Anyway my first test is on the 10th of June, then I´ll have my first official meeting that is planned in the Norwegian language. This is why my time frame is so tight. I can still continue speaking Swedish or English because they all will understand but only in the very beginning...  

Even though the Nordic languages (except Finnish) are quite close, it is still very hard to understand without learning. I was in Oslo a couple of weeks ago and that was awful... I could not follow at all what they where saying to me and everyone expected me to grasp immediately what was going on. Reading is much easier, if I read I am able to understand. This is why it came as a surprise that spoken languages is so confusing.

I started today to look for materials and the first thing I found was a forum discussion where a Swedish person was asking for advice how to learn Norwegian.

Summary for the English speaking people 

If you want to learn Norwegian, then start to read and listen.  Here are the two most relevant links to do that:

Norwegian TV/radio 

Evening Post

I continued my search and found out that Norwegian Language Council. has many more links and pages. They are working on the language development and research in Norway. It is worth looking at! They also have a special page for resources and links where you can learn Norwegian.

Seems like it is not so easy to find the one and only grammar book for Norwegian. They also write their worlds in a very funny and complicated multiple way. In Norway there are many  competing dialects that are very widely used. It makes things even more complicated because now you have to decide where to position with your learning...

Well, I have no idea just yet... truly confusing. I will just watch TV with subtitles for the hearing impaired as my first task.