Wednesday 8 August 2012

Moving on...

Well, this is the week of reckoning. So to say. Basically it's the week in which it will be determined how far I have come along since I started back in November. If it were a pregnancy, I would be about to give birth now! It's not a pregnancy though, it's the Norwegian language course. And yesterday I went for my first five hours.

My teacher had made a few little tests to test my knowledge, but she was very impressed by me so far. She hadn't thought I would have been able to do all eight lessons from when I first met her only a few weeks ago, and if it hadn't been for those darn Olympics, I might have done it. As it was, I had only done 6 1/2! Of course the course I had done on my own had helped a lot as well. It mightn't have been as repetitive as the books I am learning from now, but it was very thorough on grammar. Perhaps even a bit too thorough.

Anyway, this morning, during my second five hours, we managed to finish that first book. Turning me officially from an A1 speaker to an A2 speaker. We have now moved on to a new book: stone on stone, which will help me get as far as B2. First I have to get past B1 though and if the lessons are as easy as the first one in that book, I should be sailing through. But let me not get ahead of myself just yet. I have only just started in this book. I might be able to take it with me to England though and do some more studying once my remaining 15 hours are up. Give me as much chance as I can get to get to the B1 level I need to be at!

There are a few pitfalls along the way though: adverbs and adjectives and all that nonsense keep throwing up exceptions, weirdinesseseses and other problems and I have to learn and know them all in order for me to be able to speak to somebody. And as long as it isn't a young person swallowing half his words, I should be okay.

4 comments:

  1. Awesome! Languages are so hard to learn as an adult, is Norwegian close to any other languages?

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  2. Bravo. I'm very proud of you, and although I still think it would have been easier for you to learn Canadian, because you already know British, I do hope you are able to fulfill your dream of moving to Norway.
    K

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  3. Ah, learning a language is such fun and frustration! I wonder, is the sentence structure in Norwegian different than in Dutch and German? When I try to explain sentence structure I often use this phrase.

    Ik heb gister een huis gekocht
    I have yesterday a house bought

    How would that run in Norwegian?

    Putting the verb at the end always looks so weird if you translate it literally!

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  4. Sounds like your doing a great job. Continue the good work. I am very proud of you for taking on this challange.

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Any weighty (and not so weighty) comments are welcome!