How reading Norwegian feels to me now - and other language babblings

When I read the newspaper in Norwegian, I have a much shorter attention span than in English. As interesting as an article is, I rarely make it all the way through more than one or two entire articles, even though I can read the whole thing if I really focus.


Here's a random article (I came across in English class while researching careers somehow....). I've tried to edit it to show what reading a Norwegian article feels like to me now:


Ein the// 1970s, peoplewhofindstuffout begint flocking to Vilcabamba, ei placeyoulive ein the Andes whacch aparenntlee boasted the oldest popyoolasjon on Earth. Residents rehøgularly reeechadd aigees af 115 and beehond that remained azz helthee azz peoææp#le argafofoo youngarr. In 1973, National Geographic rahhn ein storee by ei studymanpersonguy from Harvard Medical School ahbaht this  #vallee//$ey and its people's foreverandoverandoverandoveragain yoohuthfulness.
I'll spare you the middle, then it ends like this:

Thee people af Ecuador valueerer thaii viiisdom and bigstrangewordyoudontunderstand that komes wit old age, and((¤¤ to that einnd it's tradisjonn inda Vilcabamba to biggermakeseemit your age. Efter peøæøpel turn 70 or såå, it starts til get bigmuchreally rihdhickyooluhass azz they tack azz muhach azz  abigwordfor-tenyears per year onto their true yearthey'vebeenalivenumber. To confuse things further, sorryyouhaventlearnthisword many residents are nameed after their parents, they can artichoke claim their peoplewhocreatedthems' birth rehhaccords azzz theyar own.

This is a bit of an exageration, but imagine reading two pages of this. (edit: I read this again a few hours later, and it actually makes no. sense. whatsoever. I swear Norwegian isn't THIS hard to read - sorry!) Anyways.... you come across words like "argafofoo" where you have to completely guess based on words around it, biglongwordsstrungtogetherlikethis, and words where you think you know the meaning, but you're actually thinking of something totally different. (Like artichoke in this example).


The last situation can be both funny and frustrating. Early in a conversation, if you don't know a main word and don't have the chance to ask, you just have to pick a random word or idea to fill in the blank. Gotta love listening to an entire conversation thinking the people are talking about the dead bodies they found in their freezer, then realizing at the end they meant pizza. Or just never figuring it out and wondering just what on earth Norwegians talk about. 


In general though, reading in Norwegian slows me down and breaks up my rythym, especially if I start thinking about the words individually. As a result I do a lot more skimming of magazines and newspapers than I did at home.


Oh, and guess how much your average magazine costs here at a convenience store. Like 10 dollars. Whatt?


(- The links below where pictures would have been go to the cartoons I was going to use in this post, but didn't want to risk the big scary fine they put up for copying. I guess there was a little guilt in there too...

Doesn't break the text up as nice, but it's worth clicking on the links!)

(click here for the picture that would've been here )

I've gotten pretty used to different spoken dialects, but it's still a bit of a stretch reading nynorsk; you have to jump to conclusions about words; know that instead of "water", you might write "vatter", and be able to make the connection quick enough to actually make it through what you're reading. 

I'm not sure if my attempts to write other languages in english is making any sense whatsoever, but anyways...

Say that instead of "How do you know where it's possible to buy a bottle of water", you have to read: "fow do yoo knaw fere its pawsibble to buy ai bottle of vatter", to read it in nynorsk.

It's readable, but you have to stretch your imagination further, and come across more unknown words.

And then try danish, which feels like they wrote norwegian but had a little to much fun putting d's and g's all over the place 

Or swedish, which is written more differently again, and I can feel my brain cells stretching as they try and connect "noe" with "något" (something) "ikke" with "inte" (not), and so on. And then again, there's even more words that just make no sense. Reading swedish feels sharp and "pokey" to me, with all their c's that norwegian doesn't use.

Actually understanding spoken Swedish and Danish though....that's a different story for me.

(Click here for picture)

One of the first things I did once I found out I was coming to Norway, was ambitiously switch the language on my laptop, camera, and anything else where you could change the language that actually had Norwegian as an option. After realizing it's actually hard to save an important assignment when you don't know the Norwegian word for "save", I switched it all back.

I've had facebook in Norwegian for a while now though, and just switch it back when I want to change privacy settings or something and need to be sure of what I'm doing. When I do, it all looks strange now.

When I first got my Norwegian cell phone and laptop though, I was forced to figure out what everything said, like it or not. It took me forever to navigate around on the cell phone, and error messages are annoying enough when you understand what they're saying. Eventually it became natural to click "avbryt" instead of "cancel", and "slett" instead of "delete", and I've learned a lot of words by using technology. I've also lost documents, closed important windows, and annoyed everyone behind me in the ATM lineup playing the "which side is the cancel button usually on" game.

Learning a new language definitely makes life more interesting!

Click here for picture

*Guy walks by and swears loudly in Norwegian*

Noellen "why are so many people speaking french here?"