Before I left:
It's also not that much fun to say anymore, after saying it way too many times.
Sonja (who has Norwegian grandparents) decided she would learn Norwegian with me, and we occupied many hours of ski training inventing little challenges for ourselves, and quizzing eachother. The funniest was saying a sentence in english, then getting the other to translate it. Since our vocabularies were non-existent, "The trees are green and the sky is blue" would become: "vegetables are green and airports are blue." I'd read through the basic food, colour and travel sections, and just substituted in words that were sort of associated. (sky=airport?).
Every once and a while we decided we would only speak norwegian for a little while, which led to enthralling conversations like "Hello grandma!" "Hello vegetable!" "I am home" "I have a door".
I also downloaded a few Norwegian news podcasts for my ipod; I figured somehow listening to the weird sounds would help me understand. I remember coming back from a run during the summer proud that I'd listened to Norwegian the entire time, even if the only words I'd understood were obvious english ones.
I used to think sentences in french all the time when I was doing something repetitive, and they would get stuck in my head, correct or not. Norwegian blendet itself into this and made for some really odd phrases. By the time I left I understood how to put together basic sentences and knew a decent amount of grammar. Since you don't have to conjugate verbs in Norwegian, I found it a lot easier than French.
I also labelled basic objects in my room at home, and drew arrows to limbs and body parts labelling posters in my room. I still picture the painting on my wall of a mountain when I write "fjell" or my bedside table when I think "bord".
Having talked to all the other outbound exchange students and hearing them talk about their new languages, not learning Norwegian never seemed like an option. It never occured to me that people would be surprised I wanted to learn it when I could have just spoken english the whole time. I'm glad I had this idealistic mindset about it though; I think being so determined in the beginning helped a lot.
Arrival:
Being able to put together simple sentences was pretty much useless in the beginning, since I could neither understand nor pronounce anything. Bergen's dialect sounds really different from the man in the podcasts, and translating that into speech seemed impossible. I forgot I'd ever tried to learn any of the language, and actually forgot how much effort I put in before I came until I started writing this. It was helpful though, because knowing basic sentence structure and grammar made it easier when I started trying to talk, as well as when I started understanding more spoken words.
When I think back over the year I tend to superimpose my language skills now onto all my memories, and tend to forget that it didn't come instantly. I don't really remember what it was like to stand in a group of people and understand nothing, but I did a lot of that in the beginning. The first time I remember understanding part of a conversation was at the district conference in late September. It was a simple conversation between 3 or 4 people, and I was able to follow along for a couple minutes, which I got ridiculously excited about.
Starting to talk:
Language camp for the exchange students was a month after I came to Norway, and from a language learning perspective, not very helpful (although lots of fun). The week of speaking english and not having to try and decipher the weird sounds was a good break though. For some reason when I got back I was all..."I can do this", and the first sort-of Norwegian conversation was driving back from the airport with Helene. I'd tried speaking a fair bit before that, but I don't think I ever really made sense. I think that was the point where I asked them to speak more Norwegian to me, and started getting more confident with simple sentences and conversations.
There's a big difference between understanding a conversation between other Norwegians, and understanding when someone talks directly to you, the latter being much easier. Being able to properly follow and contribute to bigger conversations took several more months (and is still an ongoing process). But from what I remember, I started really trying to have basic one on one conversations in Norwegian in late September. That doesn't mean I stopped speaking english at that point, just that I would try first in Norwegian, and it became more often a blending of languages than straight english from the beginning.
And the months kept going....
I have a hard time convincing myself I'm any better at Norwegian now than I was in November, although logically I know I must be. Most of the learning happened in the first few months for me though, as speaking and comprehension caught up to writing. After that it's just been a very gradual upward slope of picking up new words and expressions, getting more confident, and slowly understanding more.
The process of learning Norwegian: a graph
When I think back over the year I tend to superimpose my language skills now onto all my memories, and tend to forget that it didn't come instantly. I don't really remember what it was like to stand in a group of people and understand nothing, but I did a lot of that in the beginning. The first time I remember understanding part of a conversation was at the district conference in late September. It was a simple conversation between 3 or 4 people, and I was able to follow along for a couple minutes, which I got ridiculously excited about.
Starting to talk:
Language camp for the exchange students was a month after I came to Norway, and from a language learning perspective, not very helpful (although lots of fun). The week of speaking english and not having to try and decipher the weird sounds was a good break though. For some reason when I got back I was all..."I can do this", and the first sort-of Norwegian conversation was driving back from the airport with Helene. I'd tried speaking a fair bit before that, but I don't think I ever really made sense. I think that was the point where I asked them to speak more Norwegian to me, and started getting more confident with simple sentences and conversations.
There's a big difference between understanding a conversation between other Norwegians, and understanding when someone talks directly to you, the latter being much easier. Being able to properly follow and contribute to bigger conversations took several more months (and is still an ongoing process). But from what I remember, I started really trying to have basic one on one conversations in Norwegian in late September. That doesn't mean I stopped speaking english at that point, just that I would try first in Norwegian, and it became more often a blending of languages than straight english from the beginning.
And the months kept going....
I have a hard time convincing myself I'm any better at Norwegian now than I was in November, although logically I know I must be. Most of the learning happened in the first few months for me though, as speaking and comprehension caught up to writing. After that it's just been a very gradual upward slope of picking up new words and expressions, getting more confident, and slowly understanding more.
The process of learning Norwegian: a graph
Middle of the year:
In the fall and early winter, I really missed speaking english. It got frustrating to try and say things and get blank stares, or have no idea what people were talking about. I don't think I missed english so much as I missed how easy it was to communicate before.
Sometime in mid-December I remember sitting with a group of friends and realizing I just....understood. That I was thinking about what they were saying and what I would say rather than focusing on the language itself. People talk about the moment where the language "clicks", and if I had to pick, that would have been it. Although it's been more of a constant sequence of smaller clicks than any one epiphany.
The last few months:
There's never been a point where I spoke only Norwegian; I've always mixed in english words and sentences, more or less depending on who I'm talking to. But I'd say now that I can have a fairly normal conversation, read a newspaper article if I want to, and understand the TV and radio. After the first couple months I've learned mostly by talking, so there's words I use but don't know how to write, and grammar bits I mess up because I never really learned them.
In contrast to the seven years of French I've had in school, I'm happy with the past 10 months of being in Norway. I'd be terrified to speak French with a native speaker, whereas speaking Norwegian feels normal. My pronounciation still needs a ton of work, but unless Norwegians are mind readers, I've been somewhat understandable.
One of the girls I babysit asked me "do you speak Norwegian?" while we were jumping on the trampoline the other day. We'd never spoken any other language together over the past month! So I guess?
There's still plenty of times where I say a sentence and realize I pronounced it entirely wrong, or just give up and speak English. But the challenge of speaking a new language has been so much fun, and I no longer miss speaking English. I have to think more before I talk, but I think that's a good thing. When I speak English for a while now I feel like my brain shuts off and I babble, just because I can. Compared to the winter when I just wanted to speak my own language, I could now see myself continuing to learn and use Norwegian most of the time. Too bad it's not exactly a major world language.
I could've been learning Arabic, or Japanese....
According to wikipedia (that's become way too common of a phrase for me now), Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean are the hardest languages for an english speaker to learn. Regardless of how true that is, Norwegian definitely isn't one of them, although Norwegians seem to be convinced their language is impossible for English speakers to learn. I think this is because you don't have to learn the language to get by here, and many people don't. So they're surprised when a foreigner does speak it at all. So you get a ton of compliments on being able to say basic things, even though the alphabet, word order and grammar are so similar. How proficient you can get in a language over ten or eleven months depends a lot on which language it is. Pronounciation has by far been the hardest part for me, and I can't imagine having to learn all new characters and sentence structure and all the other aspects of languages I know nothing about.
I came across THIS interesting article a while ago, explaining why the author believes Norwegian is the easiest language for english speakers to learn. It has by no means been easy, and I'd like to believe the Norwegians who say it's so hard to learn. But I have to agree with his points, and in relation to many countries I've had it pretty easy.
Nearing the end of the year...
Nearly 10 months ago exchange seemed so impossibly long that it would never end, like I had all the time in the world here. But I don't, and time goes by insanely fast. I'm ready to go home and see everyone, to walk barefoot down Mountain Station road, go to dairy queen and then down to lakeside, argue with Shawn over who'se on dishes and be able to drive again. But just for a couple weeks, until I'll be missing speaking Norwegian, taking busses and trains and all the people here. I could see myself going home for the summer then coming back for next school year, but for now it's time to go to university and start life. Even if the life I've been living here is pretty much amazing. Aaand I still have a month left of it! (as of today).
Before I knew what country I'd be going to, I had three dreams where I was in Norway, and none about any of the other countries. Isn't that weird? I never thought I would be thinking and speaking a language I'd barely even heard of a year and a half ago, but I am!
And I'll come back someday.
11:45 pm a week or so ago - it's starting to barely get dark at night
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