For 20 days I have been listening to a tape with a course for beginner learners of Norwegian. I spent less than one hour per day listening to this tape. And there were some days when I did not listen to it at all.
I usually listened to the tape in the morning after waking up. I was still in bed, listening for about half an hour. I sometimes listened to the tape while reading in Norwegian, or even while doing something else, not related to Norwegian. In each case, I listened casually, without focusing my attention, without re-playing the tape to hear something again.
I do not have a transcript of the tape. In other words, I cannot read the contents of the tape. I can only listen to it and try to understand.
In the meantime, I was reading a textbook for beginner learners of Norwegian, and I was reading a normal Norwegian novel. The tape and the books were my only input of Norwegian. (To the last sentence, there is a comment by Krzysztof Cichy and my reply to his comment.)
I learned to understand parts of the tape. From time to time I can understand whole sentences from the tape and in many places I know what's going on, what the people are talking about. For example, I can tell when they are talking about food; I can tell when they are introducing themselves, giving one's names and asking for other person's names. (To the last sentence, there is a comment by Krzysztof Cichy.)
I find it interesting that I learned to understand some of the tape by listening to it so passively, so casually, even carelessly. I feel that reading the Norwegian books helped me understand the tape.
Today I started working on Norwegian pronunciation. I have a book about Norwegian pronunciation for foreigners. It's a theoretical book. The sounds are described and phonetic transcription is given. The book is written entirely in Norwegian and I like this fact.
Today I spent over 90 minutes on this book and so this day marks the beginning of my acquaintance with the Norwegian phonetic transcription.
I want to describe how I used the book today. Every sound in Norwegian is described separately in this book. I started reading the book from the description of the first sound and finished after reading the description of the last sound. Consequently, I went through all the sounds in Norwegian.
I skipped the theoretical descriptions of the sounds. The descriptions were dealing with the position of the tongue inside the mouth. I was not interested in this. I only cared about phonetic transcription.
The book gave many words together with their phonetic transcription. I copied the words with their transcription by hand into a notebook. In all, I wrote down over 200 words with transcription into my notebook. I give four examples. The examples are chosen so that I don't have to use special symbols.
Now I know all the symbols that are used to transcribe Norwegian pronunciation. And I know about some of the regularities in Norwegian pronunciation. I find it interesting that I can learn much about pronunciation by studying transcription without listening to any sounds. Listening to sounds will be essential sooner or later, but my point is that I find it useful to study transcription even without audio.
I am curious if my ability to understand the tape has increased. I haven't listened to the tape since I finished reading the phonetic book and I wasn't listening to the tape while reading the phonetic book. Perhaps tomorrow I will notice my increased understanding of the tape, or perhaps not. I don't know today.
I woke up today and started listening to the Norwegian tape. I listened for about 40 minutes. I have a strong impression that I understood significantly more than before. My impression is so strong that I'm excited. I can tell for certain that I understood words and phrases that I had not understood before.
My certainty comes from my two impressions presented below. I recognize the parts which I have figured out before. And I recognize the parts which I have just figured out for the first time.
Today, as I listened, I was constantly noticing that I had just figured out something for the first time. The frequency of this phenomenon made me use the word "significantly": I have a strong impression that I understood significantly more than before.