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Norwegian: Most Difficult Language? | ||
Tags: Norwegian | Difficulty | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4656 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 25 of 36 19 September 2013 at 7:08am | IP Logged |
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The way I see it, English might be the only language where a native accent is easier to
achieve. The media and globalization and all that bring it "to your door", without the need of going to an English speaking country. I know a couple of persons who sound almost like native speakers just because of too much TV exposure. For all other major languages, I guess it's possible but demands a lot of effort. So, my take on this is that Norwegian is not exceptional regarding this matter. For example, people say that Finnish is easy to pronounce, and I agree it is less complicated than other languages (at least regarding number of phonemes). But still soo many foreigners speak with their native tongue's accent (if they bother to learn it). It definitely is an exception to hear somebody with a good accent in some other language than English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4462 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 26 of 36 19 September 2013 at 8:00am | IP Logged |
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It is not that difficult to master Spanish and Italian (and speak it with a native-like accent), even Brazilian Portuguese is not that difficult. I think in Danish it is even more difficult to sound like a native than in Norwegian.
I am studying both Bokmaal and Nynorsk with a Bergen pronunciation, I think it is the easiest pitch accent to imitate (Finnmark accents excluded), standard Eastern Norwagian is very tricky since both tones 1 and 2 have a rise on an unaccented (post-tonic) syllable. On Norwegian TV you can hear Standard East Norwegian / Bokmaal, Bergensk and nynorsk. All other accents are somewhat uncommon (unless you tune in local news). If one likes Norway, (s)he should not neglect the language diversity. It is funny both articles come from countries known for prescriptive norms (standard Russian is the only form for 99% of Russians, and Hochdeutsch is for like 90% of Germans), so language diversity in countries like Norway can be overwhelming to foreigners. Edited by Medulin on 19 September 2013 at 8:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4656 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 27 of 36 19 September 2013 at 11:06am | IP Logged |
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What's the basis for that argument? (that those languages are easy to master, native
accent included). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4622 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 28 of 36 19 September 2013 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
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In starting Welsh (and using an audio-based course, so one hears native speakers from
the start, and tries to imitate them), I've found it's almost impossible to pronounce it all in anything other than something that sounds like a Welsh accent (even if it might not fool a "native"). I'm not quite sure why that is, but perhaps it's because is so (surprisingly) different to English (surprising, given that it is spoken in a neighbouring country). However, I gather that the Welsh spoken near the English border has undergone a certain amount of influence from English, and the term "Wenglish" is sometimes used. However, what I mean is, it's just somehow difficult to try to pronounce Welsh, and retain an English accent with it. Even the English loan words come out with a Welsh accent, curiously. Another factor with that course is that when the teacher says a phrase in English for you to repeat in Welsh, he does it in a strong Welsh accent, so your mind is thinking Welsh for the whole time, not just for the actual Welsh. i can't help here, but think of Viktor D Huliganov, who teaches Russian on Youtube in a mixture of Russian and Russian-accented English! Steering this back to Norwegian, after a year's (admittedly superficial) book and CD study, I was surprised how difficult it was to understand the spoken language once I got to Norway (Oslo). Admittedly, I wasn't there long. Maybe I would have got more used it in time. I'd also listened to a reasonable amount of Norwegian radio via the internet, and that seemed equally difficult to pick anything out of. I hope to try again, one day, but it's not my priority at the moment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5175 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 29 of 36 19 September 2013 at 2:56pm | IP Logged |
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No, no, no, Polish is the hardest language!
The hardest language to learn Edited by Arekkusu on 19 September 2013 at 2:56pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 30 of 36 19 September 2013 at 4:26pm | IP Logged |
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I would go for Mongolian as most difficult. I cannot even pronounce the sentence of how to ask where the
toilet is, which is in my opinion is one of the most basic sentences to learn :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5641 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 36 19 September 2013 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
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I don't care about Norwegian dialects, as I won't be able to visit Norway ever in my life. At the moment I am highly satisfied that I can understand Norwegian Bokmâl e-mails easily and can reply them in Norwegian. And because of the correspondence activities I am able to have my first basic thoughts in Norwegian. To judge the difficulty I can say that I am with only three months of studying Norwegian further than I was with several years studying Turkish. And of course, my knowledge of Danish helps me a lot!
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MDG Pentaglot Newbie Norway Joined 3879 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German Studies: Mandarin | Message 32 of 36 25 September 2013 at 7:15am | IP Logged |
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I speak Norwegian as a second native language, and I barely understand some of the
dialects, sometimes even less than Swedish. Honestly, that does hinder in getting around in the country at all. If you can understand bokmål I suppose you would be all set. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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