It's been since months since I started learning Norwegian.
Here is an update. I'm back in Norway and it feels so good to be
back in the country that inspired me to learn its language it's great to be here
in the tiny fishing villages of northern Norway in the Lofoten Islands where I
get to listen and use the language everywhere I go it's been six months now
since I started learning Norwegian I started in October with cactus language
school and Here I am putting the language into practice so I'm going to
give you a bit of an update on how it's all going what I'm struggling with what
I'm fighting easy and what I plan to do with all the challenges that I'm facing
so here is my six-month update on how my Norwegian is progressing things first
what is my language learning routine well as you know from the previous video
I have a full-time job and I also run the intrepid guide if you want to watch
that video I'm gonna link that down in the description of how I manage learning
the language and having a full time job and running my blog but I'm gonna focus
now on the actual things that I do to learn Norwegian so I have to break up my
time and I have to optimize every piece of time that I have throughout the day
and throughout the week so to be honest the majority of my language study comes
from my language learning class which is every Wednesday night so after work I
have a two hour language class that cactus language school it's just a 15
minute bus ride from work and that's where I really get to sort of just focus
on the language so usually at the site of the language class we'll work in
groups just to sort of warm up the teacher may even do a dictation to us
where she will read out something or she will play an audio and then we have to
write down what we hear and then from there we'll start to look at the grammar
we may look at new pieces of grammar or we may revise but what we've currently
learned and we also get into little groups and we talk to each other we put
the language into practice so at the end of the lesson the teacher will give us
homework to do and I usually like to do this the day after so I can revise what
we've covered on the Wednesday night sort of helps to reinforce what we've
learnt so I don't forget anything so our teacher her name is Sybil and she's
amazing she will send us an email either the same night or this day after telling
us all the different things that we've covered and shook it was exercises that
we can then go back and revise and then any sort of additional reading material
that we'll need for the following week and because she's sending these
exercises to me electronically I can pull them out send them back to her she
was send them back to me with any Corrections and any additional notes and
that means I don't have to wait a whole week to find out if I was right or wrong
so when I might in language class I'm using different language learning apps
and I'm toggling between them because they gave me all sorts of different
exposure to different vocabulary which is what I really need to focus on in the
beginning stages of learning Norwegian so I use monthly I use duolingo and I'm
using drops a little bit as well now and just to mix up the different learning
material that I've been exposed to since being in Lakota and I've picked up a
nice quiz book and I've also got a crossword book so this will also help me
to learn different vocabulary from what I'm learning in class as well and just
to mix things up a bit and one of the exercises sheets that our teacher gives
us and grammar explanations is from this exploring Norwegian grandma and this is
something that you can't buy anywhere online it's really hard to get so I
bought this one here in Norway but yeah the teacher is really great at finding
resources all over the internet and sort of bringing them all together so we
would under someone textbook we're sort of spread and we get different exposure
to all these different explanations I usually find that the more explanations
you get the easier is to sort of understand the different grammar points
so that's really helpful so in the morning I like to do a couple of like
the short language lessons on the app I might revise any sort of notes that I've
taken from the previous week lesson when I'm at work I usually listen to either
music in Norwegian music or a podcast and on the way home I do something
similar so depending on how tired I am I might listen to something and let's just
more sort of like passive learning where I'm just listening I'm not like focusing
on any of the grammar points and I'm sort of look hearing but any sort of
words that I recognize and that will help
to like remember it in context so yeah I sort of try and do it at that half an
hour spreads throughout the day and that's basically all I'm doing at the
moment to focus on improving my Norwegian so what are some of the
challenges that are facing with learning Norwegian well there's no one way of
speaking their language there are so many different dialects around the
country now this is due to the fact that it was a very and still is a very
mountainous country and because it is so mountainous that this sort of acted like
a fence between bridges and different dialects and different accents evolved
so now the language that I'm learning is book mail and no one really speaks book
mail it's one of the two written forms that you'll come across there is book
much literally translates to book tongue and then there's ninotchka which is new
Norwegian a new Norwegian or new nosh is basically with their language that
you're mainly here in the life of smaller villages in the smaller towns
the in places and big cities like Oslo and two-thirds of the country they use a
language that are very similar to book Milland that's sort of the one that you
will learn if you're learning Norwegian so that means that when I'm listening to
Norwegian whether that be music movie podcast or a TV show I'm getting all
sorts of different input different accents different pronunciation to say
for example in Bergen they will say make instead of me though we won't use the
feminine gender everything is either masculine or mutual so I have to get
used to that and it's basically you know I have to sort of consider right well if
I want to focus on work well basically I need to just focus on TV programs where
the presenters are going to be speaking in a very similar form of bookmark
because no one really speaks book meloni students do who are learning Norwegian
because as I said the dialects change so much between towns villages and cities
as well another thing I have to get used to is remembering where the stress falls
on the syllables in Norwegian now picked up a bit of a habit with French and
Italian with putting the stress on the second-to-last syllable but in Norwegian
that's not the case and I have to remember to put it at the beginning of
the word serious it was saying look Fortin I need to say Norton so I need to
just move their emphasis to the beginning of the word and this trips me
up all the time so to help me get used to the shift
the emphasis of the syllables I just basically need to listen more to
language I need to use it more and I need to be corrected more and I get all
of those things in class so this is just something that's going to happen and
come naturally over time one of the frustrations that you have when you
first start learning your language is that there's a lot of input and there's
not much output output in the sense that you can't really say what you want to
say you'll be like oh what's the word for this or how do I say that in the
past tense so this is a bit of a struggle that you have in the beginning
I am very much in that phase right now but since I've been in Norway and I've
been looking at different vocabulary for different situations I've been able to
put it into practice so you just have to be patient with yourself in the
beginning I am very impatient I like to get things done I like to move quickly
but I know that I can't do that because of time and it all it is is language
learning it just takes time time and patience and perseverance and passions
so what have I learned about Norway the Norwegians and the Norwegian language
well the first thing I learned is the fact that they don't really use please
which is Varsha still but they'll say tuk for everything so take for example
you go to the supermarket and they'll ask you I do want a plastic bag and
you'll say yuck instead of Yasha still so tuk for everything I'm also loving
how similar Norwegian and English sounds sometimes and there are a few sentences
that I picked up during class that I'm like wow that sounds just like English
so say there has been an example where they've said we can go tell them so we
can go to them or Det add up to us so it is up to us and another one is border
art of you nor so where are we now and I'm like well this is crazy similar so
all in all I'm pretty happy with the progress that I've been making and I can
definitely see a huge difference from when I was here last time which was
three months ago in December when I was basically just listening it to the
language I wasn't actively participating at this time around I've had more
confidence to actually open my mouth and just to throw myself into the deep end a
little bit and I actually went to the supermarket and conducted my whole
conversation in Norwegian when I couldn't find something so let's take a
look and see how that went
so when you spend a week in Norway at some point you have to go food shopping
so I'm gonna head inside this one for this supermarket and put my new
Norwegian skills to the test
but in my Norwegian class we always learn about these is rinsed economic
what are these are in sticker so mattress supermarket and I found them so
this is what the Norwegians have for breakfast and this one has three
different types and they basically just bread rolls that you can have four
different times of the day but these ones are focused so it means they're
breakfast bread rolls tonight I want to have some pasta but I can't seem to find
the tortellini that I'm after so I'm gonna try and find someone who can help
me
so she said I need to go to Hill there are denied which is two rows down so was
to try and find this pasta sauce and the article Fellini
my first shopping trip in Norwegian I'm really loving the social aspect of the
cactus language school class as well there's a whole bunch of us ranging from
20 to 50 years old and coming from different parts of the world I come from
Australia we've got Brits we've got Americans we've got Spanish and we all
just get along really well we have lots of fun and giggles in class so we've
also created a whatsapp group which is really nice and this is a place where we
share links to different resources that we've found or any sort of events that
we've come across that are happening in London and it's just a nice way for us
to keep in contact maybe ask each other any questions or share things that we're
struggling with with the language and it's just yeah nice part of the social
aspect of being in a language class so that's my 6-month Norwegian update if
you want to learn your own foreign language be sure to check out CAC this
language school I'm going to link to them in the description below and make
sure you check out the other videos that I've made about learning languages I've
got one about how to learn a language with the full-time job and the other one
is what to expect in your first language class if you have any questions
whatsoever leave them below and I'll get back to you until next time hit that
like button and subscribe to my channel turn on those notifications and I'll see
you in the next video bye