ÆRIE DESCENT: a rather arbitrarily-named blog

Learning resources Hullo, I've just started teaching myself Norwegian (bokmål). I'll be posting about helpful websites/books/techniques for learning here as well as things I randomly find out about Norwegian culture, my progress and other good stuff. I have two other blogs: one's a MP3 blog posting all kinds of music (lots of metal, but I enjoy a lot of different genres as well) here and the other's a more personal blog which basically consists of me explaining interesting things, taking screencaps of BBC science fiction programmes and complaining about Java here. I think that's it. Please leave me a message if there's anything you want me to look for or if you feel like giving me a short Norwegian lesson :)

[aerie-descent]

I read the preview chapter of the annotated version of Erlend Noe's Naiv. Super. yesterday. I enjoyed it a lot; I'd like to find out what happens to the narrator and the language is simple enough that, with the annotations for less common words, I can read it easily.

...Now I just need to find a Norwegian copy that isn't ridiculously expensive. For now I shall be reading fairytales off Logos Library and crying quietly. Damn your high exchange rate, Norway!

[thelanguagecommunity]

This website has free literature for a ton of languages:

Afan Oromo, Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Assamese, Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Brazilian Portuguese, Brenton, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Calabrese, Catalan, Chinese, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dioula, Dutch, and much more.

So if you need reading material, no matter what your language is, you will probably find it here. Go check it out!

One more thing, if you have any suggestions of language resource lists you want to see, please tell me because I’m running out.

[aerie-descent]

regarding "han tar jo av": "å ta av" can be translated to something being crazy or very good. If there is a party and "festen tar av" it means that it is a really wild party. Also if an argument gets really heated you can also say "han tok helt av", meaning that that person got really angry/excited. I think what the person in the interview meant to say was that Däniken is a good writer, but I thought that the way he said it was a bit strange. I am norwegian by the way, hehe.

Ahhhh, cool! Thank you for explaining :)

[aerie-descent]

'han tar jo av'

Reading an interview with Fenriz, this came up. What does it mean!? I tried Googling it to see if I can figure it out in other contexts, but it still doesn't make any sense.

[Context: 'Jeg har ikke lest så mye Däniken. Men han tar jo av, han.']

Takk for hjelpen!

Akkurat nå leser jeg mange artikler på Klar Tale, men jeg har ikke 'studert' norsk (grammatikk, f.eks) siden september :/ Det er vanskelig å organisere livet mitt. Jeg burde ikke bruke nettet så mye...

[aerie-descent]

Spørsmål!

Når man skriver ei liste over ting å gjøre senere, hvordan bøyer man verb?

'Stek løker' fordi man burde gjøre det?

'Steke løker'?

'Steker løker'?

(beklager for min dårlig norsk, jeg må studere mer :P Takk for hjelpen!)

In case I'm completely incomprehensible: how would one conjugate verbs for a to-do list?

[aerie-descent]

random etymology of the day

appelsin

I saw the word 'appelsinjuice' for the first time and was instantly reminded of the Russian апельсиновый сок. Having previously thought it was just a random Russian thing, I was quite surprised to see it in Norwegian. I did a quick lookup and found there are actually appelsin-es all over the place. Here's an explanation of the German Apfelsine:

"Literally, "Apfelsine" means "apple from China." Oranges were brought from China to Europe by the Portugese around 1500. "Sina" was an old spelling for "China.""

If only our Russian teacher had actually told us this.

On a related note, what IS it with apples anyway? Pommes de terre, appelsiner... I could go on. (Well, actually, I couldn't, but I bet there are more apple-words out there.)

[aerie-descent]

Akkurat nå leser jeg om den norske nasjonaldagen. Gratulerer med dagen!

...Jeg har [what's 'just' in this context?] husket, men til frokost hadde jeg frokostblanding med røde jordbær, blå blåbær og hvite melk.

Jeg mente ikke å gjør at, men det er hyggelig :D

også, jeg har lært dette ord 'frokostblanding'. VELDIG NYTTIG

[craigariathy1-blog-blog]

My Norwegian learning resources (absolute beginner)

ohzeitgeist ответил(a) на ваш пост: Jeg vil gjerne reise til Norge!

Do you have any resource recommendations?

At the beginning I am a fan of good old fashioned textbook style learning with exercises and vocabulary lists and listening to dialogues. Go as fast as you want but make sure you learn the basics well. It’s been tempting to rush through the beginning stages of Norwegian because it seems super easy. Don’t be deceived!

I also like having two different textbook-like resources to shake things up a bit and see the same words/phrases in different contexts. It’s also good when you come to a grammar situation that you don’t understand. Two different explanations can often be better than one.

The two I’m using, as an absolute beginner:

1. My Little Norway is a really good (and free!) place to start. The first 38 lessons go right in order. After that you’ll have to click around a bit to figure out what’s going on as they’ve changed formats. 

2. I’m also using Teach Yourself Norwegian by Margaretha Danbolt Simons. It is the really basic small 250ish page textbook with two cd version and costs about $12-$15. It looks like this. It is the kind you can get easily at BN in a plastic box. Some people hate TY, but I like it because it is small and doesn’t require a separate dictionary. With your ipod and the book, you’ve got hours of learning right in your pocket. (The quality also depends on which language you are learning. Each language is written by a different author. They are not parallel texts.)

I like to focus on reading/writing WHILE listening to matching audio as I tend to learn best with simultaneous visual/audio. I also try to shadow talking right away.

There is no need to spend more than $20 for a long while and you can probably get away with free resources forever. Later on a dictionary would be a good idea (make sure it includes noun class) and at some point you might want to read Norwegian books, but the amount of free language resources online is astounding!

[aerie-descent]

Reblogging for possible future usage/this being helpful to anyone who follows me.

[aerie-descent]

Hva lærte jeg i dag?

-norske bonder vil ha mer penger

-ingen ting om metal-musikk fordi jeg vet ALT

-jeg må lær meg mer

-jeg er FANTASTISK som et TUNFISK

also my grammar is woeful

[aerie-descent]

15/05/12

listened to NRK Alltid Nyheter quite a bit

read some stories on Klar Tale (one of which I heard being talked about just now on NRK)

found an even more simplified newspaper with pictures called 'Nyheter i bilder'

read about half of the Wikipedia article on heavy metal because it's really long, added some words to my Anki deck (nothing ridiculously specialised though!)

--

Starting to read/listen to simple sentences without thinking about their meanings in English, which is nice. Probably should be doing a little writing as well (speaking's out of the question right now, don't ask), so I'll see if I can think of anything interesting to express.

[aerie-descent]

Wikipedia-A-Day (eller 'lærer om Norge på norsk')

(is it på? :/)

Haven't been learning much for quite a while, since I've been pretty busy with university. I always notice my comprehension improving when I listen to Norwegian radio, though, which is really encouraging.

I've now decided that I can spare the time to try and read at least one short Wikipedia article a day. I started this yesterday with the heavy metal portal page (e.g. something I know very well), but ultimately I'd like to be reading about Norway :)

This ought to really help me with vocabulary (since I'm putting words I don't know into my Anki deck) and grammar along with giving me lots of interesting stuff to read about!

[aerie-descent]

interesting things

but not really

I can now understand some random German words from learning Norwegian, which is quite nice. I also really love the fact that a lot of what I've learnt so far (words and grammar/sentence structure) is very similar to archaic usage of English.

[aerie-descent]

What's the difference between 'avbryte' and 'avslutte'?

avbryte = stop ongoing action

avslutte = come to the end of an action

?

I get 'Avbryt' for 'Cancel' in dialogue boxes (my system language is set to Bokmål because I'm awesome), but is 'avslutte' more to do with something coming to an end than actually being cancelled?

[aerie-descent]

I should be writing my CS practical report, but instead I am translating the I AM YOUR FATHER dialogue into incompetent Norwegian.

SØK DINE FØLELSER

[nordic-drifter]

The Norwegian language had two official written forms, Nynorsk and Bokmål. From about 1525 to 1814 Norwegian as a written language vanished; only Danish was used. After separation from Denmark the question of creating an official Norwegian language was raised. 

In 1864 Ivar Aasen published a grammar book, and later a dictionary, based upon his survey of Norwegian spoken dialects. The language he created is now called Nynorsk which, some argue, was an amalgamation of dialects that accurately reflected none of them. Unhappy with this, Knud Knudsen created a Danish-Norwegian hybrid now called Bokmål. No consensus was ever reached on which version to use, and in 1885 the two standards were declared equal. 

[aerie-descent]

koblinger

Please give me more (Bokmål/general Norway info) links! :D

Klar Tale (news written in simple Norwegian)

Norwegian for Beginners (five short written lessons, good for starting out with)

Acapela Text to Speech (use with Google Translate speech function to get an idea of pronunciation)

NorwegianLanguage.info (loads of resources here, worth exploring; here's their beginners' links section)

Grammar resource

Everyday Norwegian audio comprehension (with transcripts and exercises)

NRK internet radio (also available on iTunes; I recommend making a playlist of different stations so you can find them easily)

På Vei exercises (intended as a companion to the textbook, but the vast majority of them can be used as-is)

Links for Norwegian Learners via Apronus.com (really great site; worth checking out his Norsk Experiment diaries too)

CARLA Norwegian page (more audio as well as other stuff)

I have some more audio stuff, but most of it is saved to my computer and I'm not sure where it's from. Will update if I find out.

Programs

Anki (really useful flashcard software; there are a few Norwegian verb lists for it and you can make your own as well)

Byki (like Anki, but with audio)

Android apps

Anki

Google Translate

Match English Norwegian

TuneIn Radio (general internet radio app, but a really nice one)

Books

???

[aerie-descent]

Oppdat

So, what have I been doing Norwegian-wise since my last text post?

-downloaded Colloquial Norwegian (audio/text, 1995) illegally :O (I was actually looking for good books to buy - still am - but this came up on a forum thread; I'm going to take the phrases with a pinch of salt since it's so old, but it's a useful resource anyway)

-done some exercises from CN and written a few silly dialogues myself

-listened to lots of NRK radio (look for the stations on iTunes) and gotten even better at comprehension

-gone back to learning irregular verbs with Anki

-switched the language on my phone and laptop to Norwegian (as another passive learning method). I'd actually recommend doing this: even though you kind of know what the menu items are, you do start associating them with the other language. Also, doing anything you're not familiar with is fun :D

I still need to find a good resource for grammar and do more actual practice, but I'm quite happy with the progress I've made since that post. I'm also planning on being really amazing and watching Star Wars/Trek (not sure any of my other DVDs have the capability) with Norwegian subtitles.

It's quite hard for me to practice speaking out loud because I'm in a hall of residence, the walls are really thin and I don't want to embarrass myself (I know, I know, I'll have to do it at some point, but BLEH).

I think I'll make a list of websites I sometimes use, some of them are pretty helpful.