Dare

Norwegians are very tolerant and very patient. Speaking Norwegian with my friends played a big part in my learning.
Even if at the beginning I only started the evening in Norwegian before switching back to English.
Then they told me, ok maybe you won’t understand everything but that’s how you will progress now: everything in Norwegian! and they were right!
They made an effort to speak a little more slowly and it worked.
At first I was ashamed because I thought I had too much french accent and I thought I was being ridiculous.
I sincerely asked friends and they told me that I was not at all ridiculous, that they would rather me try even with my accent than to stay in english!

Practice

Norwegians prefer you to try and make mistakes rather than speak English when you could say a few words in Norwegian.
So don’t hesitate to practice with your friends and in everyday life, that’s really how it works.
Even if at the beginning you will hear a lot:
– « Hva sa du »? (What did you say?)
and
– « Hvor kommer du fra »? (Where do you come from?)

Listen

As I said above, listening to the radio, podcasts helps a lot because unconsciously you will become familiar with the language and you will integrate the new words better afterwards.
This is the problem with the Norwegian language in fact, we are not confronted with it in everyday life.
Listening to music in Norwegian also helped me a lot as well as audio books.

Read

2 possible reading modes:

– Reading « work mode » mode so we take our vocabulary notebook, our pen and our translator and we stop at each unknown word.
Possible with a newspaper or with articles on the internet.
I recommend that you do this on fairly short texts, like news or cultural articles, I did it a lot with NRK news articles.
Because even if we are not a fan of the media, what is said and written in the newspapers and the media is the language of everyday life and you will often read the same words.

– Reading in « leisure mode » so we don’t stop when we don’t understand a word, we go on and try to understand it with the context.
You can start with children’s books and increase the age levels as you go.
Libraries are free in Norway and you can take books from one library and return them to another!
It is also interesting to work your vocabulary by lexical fields, take one that interests you and look for all the possible words on this topic and translate them.
Many learning methods use this system.
The problem is that it’s a bit « brain stuffing ».
It’s a bit boring at first but we have to go through it!

Regularity

When you learn a new language, at the beginning there is no secret you have to learn vocabulary by heart.
Give yourself a simple, achievable goal and try to stick to it.
For example, learning 10 new words every day.
I started with a vocabulary notebook in which I wrote everything down, and regularly reread everything.
It is also a way of tracking your improvement, we say to ourselves: « yes, it’s good, that I know … » it’s a good sign!

Patience

Like all learning process, whether it is a language or something else, it does not happen overnight.
We must therefore be patient and especially not be discouraged.
This is also why it is super important to practice and talk with people because they are the ones who will tell you that you improved a lot and that is the thing that boost the most .
While we have the impression of not moving forward, when others notice the difference, it is the greatest compliment and we can communicate better and better.
Step by step, slowly !

I’ve been told many times … your Norwegian learning will be going very well when you start dreaming in Norwegian!

It’s done but I am still learning and I never tire of learning new words or expressions of this language which I find very beautiful.
And I still struggle with the dialect of some of my colleagues but that …. I believe that will always be the case!