Tuesday, 8 September 2015

Learning Norwegian

I'm trying to learn Norwegian crammed into a few months. Here are some of the tools i'm using, things i'm doing:

 1. Initially i listened to the Pimsleur Norwegian courses. A good introduction, i think, but nothing more than that.

 2. I mostly use my desktop pc for learning, so installed Norwegian Bokmal keyboard/culture setting on to it. (pc: control panel -> region & language => keyboard and languages). Means all system text is in norwegian and i can easily type the Æ, Ø, and Å characters (here for mac).

3. Duolingo Norwegian Bokmal course, great on the ipad using microphone, but I mostly use on desktop pc as typing is faster.

4. The only issue I have with duolingo, is the lack of a vocabulary page. In others words you can't see a list of the words you have learnt or are learning. Luckily, someone has created a memrise course for the duolingo course.

Memrise is probably my most used app at the moment, i use it on the desktop pc rather than ipad. I'm doing 2 other courses: 5000+ Most Common Words Part 1 A1 - Beginner Norwegian with Audio Learn Norwegian The benefit of memrise is the structured learning of Norwegian vocabulary; i'm trying to get 2000+ words into my long term memory. Memrise is similar to anki, but I've found this far more productive

5. Also, LearnNow is a great site put together buy the Norwegian Department of Language and Literature. I think the grammar pages in particular are the most useful i've found anywhere, but it is a shame that the English translation stops after Chapter 2.

More to come.