End of book review/ language progress update – Norwegian

So, I finished this book and I figured I’d share what I thought of it now and how my Norwegian has progressed.

First, I think I made a mistake in getting something made for absolute beginners. As someone who has learned Danish for over three years, I found that I was bored with the overall pace and the depth of the grammar sections. Even though Danish and Norwegian are very similar, at least in written form, there are some small, but important differences, as far as grammar is concerned, particularly when it comes to spelling rules and patterns. But there are some things I appreciated about this book. For example, after every dialogue it repeats the entire dialogue for repetition, sentence by sentence, or for the longer sentences, phrase by phrase. I can be quite a perfectionist about my pronunciation, which I admit could use quite some improvement, so this really helped get pretty good feel of Norwegian speech. Although written Danish and Norwegian are similar enough so that someone that knows one language can read the other, the pronunciation is quite different. This was the main reason, I decided to do a separate study of the Norwegian language, instead of simply using my Danish knowledge to read and to write with my Norwegian friends.

One of th features of this book that stands out from my other language learning books is that it has a translation of English for each chapter’s dialogue. 

   I know some language learners appreciate this type of feature. However, in the latter chapters, I found it quite unnecessary and that it dumbed down the learning too much for someone who really wanted to challenge their Norwegian comprehension skills as they got further into the book.
Unfortunately, I feel I didn’t learn much new from this book. However, for those who have not learned another Scandinavian language, such as Danish or Swedish, this book may perfect for getting the basics down before diving into more advanced studies. However, as mentioned earlier, I found it quite useful for improving my Norwegian pronunciation.

I am now hoping to find a book that will help me further my Norwegian studies until Enjoy Norwegian (a book from the Teach Yourself series that is intended for bringing one’s Norwegian to an C1 or advanced level) comes out in June. In the meantime, I plan to read regularly in the Norwegian language to help retain the progress I’ve made in the language.