Norwegian

Zed   Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:05 pm GMT
Hi, Im doing an internship this summer in a hospital in Norway (not sure which one, hopefully oslo), and I was wondering how important/easy it would be for me to learn a bit of Norwegian before i got there. Everyone keeps on telling me how Scandinavians all speak a perfect english however im sure that on the wards all the convo's will be in norwegian.
So is it worth it, or is Norway the kind of place where if you dont speak a native Norwegian ppl automatically switch to english?
thanks
Skippy   Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:32 pm GMT
They do speak English very well in Norway and Sweden (I don't know about Denmark, but I'm sure they do too). That being said, however, it never hurts to know a bit of your hosts' language. Signs and menus, etc. will be in Norwegian, and you will over hear most conversations in Norwegian. My advice would be to learn as much as possible before you leave. Plus, if you're working in a hospital and someone has an emergency, there's always the possibility they won't speak English (yeah I know, you could find a Norwegian speaker in one second at a hospital, but that one second is a long time if you're having an allergic reaction or you've been shot or something).
Earle   Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:07 pm GMT
I was last in Norway late last summer and I "crash-coursed" it, in order to know a bit more than the last time I was there. I really only had to use it three times in three weeks, covering a good deal of the southernmost third of the country (most of the land, if you look at a map). Those three times, I really was glad that I had the utility that I had. I have to disagree with Skippy. All highway signs and menus are routinely printed in English and in Norwegian, even in out-of-the-way places. And, yes, they will all switch instantly to English. OTOH, it's really nice to be able to read newspapers and understand the newscasts on TV. (All other programs are mostly English-language origin, with Norwegian subtitles.) In my case, I didn't read my Norsk rental car agreement closely enough, and I found out, after someone backed into me in a parking lot, leaving without a note, that I was self-insuring to the amount of $1,000, which duly appeared on my credit card statement. If you want to talk further, post here and I'll figure a way to put up my email address without it's being harvested by a spider-bot...
Earle   Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:15 pm GMT
Zed, in addition, I have a friend who is an MD who spent a year in Norway as an exchange student and has traveled back for various reasons (she's half Swedish, half French Canadian, by immediate parentage). She probably would be a good resource for you...
Zed   Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:57 pm GMT
Thanks a lot for your replies, I wasn't aware that English was so prevalant there. I remember hearing the same thing for Netherlands but actually found once in Amsterdam that besides the tourist things english wasnt that common and the locals seemed not to enjoy speaking it so much although perhaps thats because it was Amsterdam at the height of American/British invasion season ;)

Earle, that would be great, in fact im from quebec too!
zed.man86 at yahoo dot com
Guest   Mon Mar 24, 2008 11:09 pm GMT
What I want to know is how they achieve such good ORAL fluency? I know they watch movies, read books in English, but how often do they actually SPEAK it? In school I assume they speak it, but what about someone in their 40s who hasn't been to school for years. Yet they speak it perfectly naturally without any hesitation.
Earle   Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:25 am GMT
Part of it is they start young. The other part is buried in my post above. Their TV is essentially all English, except for the news. This was not true the last time I was there, but that was quite a while ago. And, unlike some countries, where English is spoken only grudgingly, they are proud of their facility with English. Zed, you've got mail...
Guest   Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:43 am GMT
That's interesting. So English is kind of like the 'mother nation' language (not politically, but linguistically), kind of like Catalunya or Quebec? Do Norwegians speak other languages too besides English? Is any of their TV from other Nordic countries?

Even so, if there are subtitles, mightn't there still be a tendency to passively understand but falter when it comes to actively speaking?

For example, I have been learning French since early high school and I can understand everything perfectly and write quite well, but I've never had a huge deal of direct contact with native speakers, so my level of speaking is FAR below my other skills.
Earle   Tue Mar 25, 2008 4:10 am GMT
Many Norwegians, particularly those in the tourist trades in one way or another, speak more than two languages. However, among those under 50, the default languages seem to be Norwegian first, and then English. The dialectical differences between areas in Norway are much wider than with English here in the States, probably because of geography and history. However, the young people in Norway (and in Denmark) are so facile with English that they chatter among themselves in English. On the TV broadcasts, I don't remember seeing any in Danish (except for the period I spent in Denmark, of course). I did see some in Swedish. Most Norwegians don't have any trouble understanding Swedish. Danish is a bit harder because of pronunciation variations which have diverged enough between the two to make the spoken language more difficult (the written language is easy, since it's basically very close to the "Bokmal" form of Norwegian derived from Danish). But, I guess the best answer is that they are very serious about building fluency in English, and that's the first and invaluable step. The "why" is bit more nebulous. I think it's their window on the wider world, in the way in which no other continental language could serve...
Xie   Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:12 am GMT
Quick question from a person of a third country:

Regardless of your native language, do you see the popularity of English in a country of such kind as a turn-off? I found some people would say it isn't very worthwhile to learn those languages when you could hardly meet native speakers and they speak English so well, while, naturally, those who can travel there or even stay wouldn't agree.

And how bilingual are they? Compared to natives of Germanic languages, I'd consider myself fairly "incompetent" because they'd know much more of English like how I know Mandarin.
Guest   Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:22 am GMT
For me, as a native English speaker interested in learning languages who always feels ashamed for not being able to understand the local lingo or at least not being able to exchange pleasantries, I would not want to live there for an extended amount of time because I wouldn't have a proper chance to learn Norwegian. I'd much rather spend my time somewhere where I could be immersed in a completely foreign environment. On the other hand, there are countless people who would view this as an amazing advantage. A foreign country where you don't need to know the language! At university I knew a lot of people who decided to go on exchange to Nordic or Northern European countries for precisely that reason.

So it just depends on your disposition and interests and willingness to learn it.
kess   Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:42 am GMT
Western Norway speaks Nynorsk, while Southern and Nothern Norway speak Bokmal. Maybe someone from Bergen and Oslo find it easier to communicate in English than to use other's dialect. It's just like in India, Southerners refuse to speak Hindi, so they speak English when they go to the North of India.
Earle   Wed Mar 26, 2008 5:04 pm GMT
Be nice if the linguistic situation in Norway were really that simple, but it's not. Are you from there?
Xie   Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:38 am GMT
>>>On the other hand, there are countless people who would view this as an amazing advantage. A foreign country where you don't need to know the language!

But I can see the point of it and the paradox associated with it. I like languages but I also wish I were a monolingual Anglophone.