3 Kinds of Germans

Earle   Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:18 am GMT
Well, my family name is originally Norwegian, for one thing. Also, I love the countryside and scenery there. My wife and I have an old, dear family friend who spends the summers there at a family cabin south of Oslo. This last fall, I decided to get serious about progressing past newspaper headline reading and spent a couple of months of pretty hard study. We spent almost three weeks there late last summer, visiting Einar for a few days, and covering a good bit of the country. And I enjoyed it more for having invested the time in becoming more fluent. Also, it sits sort of in the middle, linguistically, if one wants to learn Danish or Swedish next. the Bokmål orthography is close to Danish, although the pronunciation is not, and the actual pronunciation is closer to Swedish. The language situation in Norway is really quite complex. There are a couple of long and interesting threads on the "H-T-L" forums. And, Xie, mainly extending vocabulary and complexity of grammar.
Guest   Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:10 am GMT
Earle,

What is "hard" study to you? I'm always interested in the study habits of others and how they gauge their progress.
L'italofilo   Sat Feb 23, 2008 2:14 am GMT
Standard German!
Xie   Sat Feb 23, 2008 2:31 am GMT
>>>What is "hard" study to you? I'm always interested in the study habits of others and how they gauge their progress.<<<

There's a lot to do with psy. preparation, learning strategies & tactics, fighting for time, dealing with people (native speakers & those who question you)...

I'm not him, but I'd say fighting for time and dealing with people are the most important and take "most of the time". That's very heavy psy. training. I learn to manage time. I learn to act smartly - when dealing with people. I think I've actually become more sociable, even with natives who don't learn anything.

...before I can meet enough Germans.
Earle   Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:11 am GMT
Xie, I used every thing I could possible lay hands on. I had CDs for my car, tapes, an excellent little book called "Norwegian in 10 Minutes a Day" (don't believe that time frame, however). I also downloaded an excellent interactive program "Learn Norwegian." I carried around a Norwegian dictionary (I also carried one around in Norway), and constantly identified objects and tried to expand my vocabulary as much as I could. It was unfortunate that Norwegians are not as plentiful in my community as Germans were when I started learning German, so I didn't have as many opportunities for one on one conversation. I only had two-three months to work because the decision to make the trip was a quick one. Now, if I'd been heading for Japan or China, there would have been many opportunities for conversational practice, but I wouldn't have been able to learn very much in that length of time, because of the chasm between English and those oriental languages. English, German and Norwegian are really quite closely related. With decent language-learning skills, Norwegian is not that great of a leap, if one is fluent in English and German. Not a very good explanation, but I hope it helps explain a bit...
Guest   Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:53 am GMT
I asked the original question and it explains a lot. I am aware of the "Ten Minutes a Day" books. One is supposed to go only as far as one can in ten minutes. I actually wondered how many hours you put in compared to your usual study.

Did you use Norwegian much? Were they appreciative of your efforts?
Xie   Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:25 am GMT
I'm also thinking of Norwegisch ohne Mühe. Did you try that?

I might be like a salesman, but I really recommend (awkwardly) almost everything... well, you might probably know very well already, you can use for something like Norwegian. You can't choose when you have little to; for me, I have to use, not choose, everything I have, when it's 10 times more difficult to learn a foreign language in my place (nor can I expect a huge budget for learning alone).
Earle   Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:54 pm GMT
Guest, I went back and looked inside the cover of the book and you're right. I had not noticed the "spend 10 minutes" part. I actually spent hours a day in study. As to how much I used it in conversation, not really that much, although they were very appreciative, since so few people even try. In fact, I got that question over and over - "why did you bother to learn it?" However, just the ability to read newspapers, etc., is not to be discounted. And, in a couple of more remote places, I did run into folks who did not speak English. In a restaurant in Voss, I was conversing in a mix of English and Norwegian with the lady who was the cashier (one of those places where you place your order there and they bring the food to your table). I went back to her to ask where the restroom was and she spoke totally in Norwegian, including the directions on how to use the locking pad and the number code to access the restroom, so Norwegian was very handy then. But the fact remains that all of the highway signs are in English and Norsk, all the menus are bilingual, and many English-speakers live in Norway for years without feeling the need to learn Norwegian. Just about every person there under the age of 50 speaks creditable English. My final use of it was at the Bergen airport, where all the signs for where to turn in rental cars, etc., were only in Norwegian. :) Just when you think you can count on English. Xie, I didn't use that book. I just checked the prices at Amazon, and they start at $166 US and range up to $272, including four cassettes. None of the study aids I used cost that much...
Guest   Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:11 pm GMT
Thank-you for your interesting story, Earle especially the part about the restrooms. You never know when you are going to need a language (or at least part of one).

Expensive books:

I never buy diy (do it yourself) language books/tapes/CDs for more than 25 dollars or so. There are so many ways to get used items for less.
Half Price bookstores in my city always gets interesting language
books and CDs/tapes. I've seen good buys at Hastings as well. One just has to check every month or so. Then there is Froogle (internet) and Amazon. Our dear friends at H-T-L also have suggested resources.

Norwegisch ohne Mühe. LOL, I know who loves these books at H-T-L.
Earle   Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:51 pm GMT
Interestingly enough the cheapest DOM, at $166, is the low one on Amazon, the new one is $187, and the other used one is $272. No rhyme or reason. And I agree, I've been able to come up with cheaper aids. When I think about it, I did get a little practice before I went. I have a friend who was an exchange student in Norway for a year. Her mom is French Canadian and her father was a Finnic Swede, fluent in both and also in English. We had a dinner invitation from her and her husband, both of whom are old backpacking/kayaking friends, and she and I managed to carry on dinner conversation in Norwegian, while everyone ignored us. I borrowed some tapes and books from her. Also, I made the acquaintance of an Icelander whose grandfather was Norwegian and he was fluent in both Icelandic and Norwegian, still having relatives in Norway. I spent an interesting evening with him. He was retired from Icelandair, and, when he was naturalized, he decided to shorten his name, since he thought people might have trouble with it. So, he shortened it to "Asp" from "Asplundh." Of course, there are orange tree-trimming trucks running all over the country with "Asplundh" on the side... :D
Guest   Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:42 pm GMT
Yes, what a cool name-like Casbah. "Asp" What a name! It makes me think of Cleopatra somehow.

Maybe you could go to Minnesota on a vacation, Earle. Once a year or so, the Norwegians come out for some special event. I don't know much about it. I sang with a woman who was completely distracted on the day this event occurs several years ago.

All the Scandinavians I've met have been beyond my ken. I guess this is why I didn't attempt any Scandinavian languages before this year. I have a hard time understanding the ones from Minnesota-every single one of them I found unusual. I'm sure it must have something to do with the culture. I feel more comfortable with people of almost any other cultural heritage. This must be why that Prairie Home guy is able to make so many jokes. The culture must be rich.
Earle   Sat Feb 23, 2008 11:02 pm GMT
My Norwegian/American friend we visited in Oslo refers to him as "Mr. Snake." LOL I've actually been on a number of vacations in MN. However, it usually consists of one stop in the Twin Cities or Duluth and then on to the BWCA and Quetico. I guess I could try the Scandinavian event. My family name, "Self" is originally Norse - "Sjøulfe" (using Norwegian orthography, rather than Old Norse), or "Sea Wolf." Most southern Selfs have dropped the "e" on the end, although one sees other spellings of the name. Most Upper Midwest Selfs retain the "e." In fact, there's another tax attorney in Birmingham, here in Alabama, named "Ed Selfe," but he's originally from MN. Keillor, though, is faking it. His family is Scottish. Once, he told the story of how he came up with "Lake Woebegone." It was kinda sad. When he was first married, he and his then wife moved to a village which was basically German. He was largely ostracized. Once, after living there about a month, he had gone down to the local pub, being ignored, except one resident detached himself from the clique and made his way down to Garrison and gave him the third degree - where you from, etc. Satisfied, he returned to his group and nobody ever made another overture. Keillor later invented Lake Woe to be what that village never was - and he changed the ethnicity from German to Norwegian...
Xie   Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:09 am GMT
LOL, I'm afraid I wouldn't personally try this too. It's sort of paradoxical that, while I seldom buy English books for this purpose (you, Norwegian; me, others), I do recommend quite a few supposedly expensive ones, even though everyone says they are overpriced. There you are, I know the markets of both the Anglosphere and Chinese mainland (and Hong Kong), and so I know how _difficult_ it could be to find materials _alone_.

I'd say some of the things you guys might have seen (like forum posts elsewhere) are, imo, both very "academic" and "bourgeois". It seems like internet communities often develop along the lines of some sect-like things. I'd just say it's always a problem with people - a few, a bunch or an awesome lot of them. Since "I say" the Chinese often have no idea about foreign language (in this topic, like German), I did try a lot of methods supported by others (sort of like fun-club discussions), and I discard or modify them as I see fit. Commercial interests/problems aside, I'd say I've had my horizons widened to see "ah, the Anglophone guys do struggle with POVs and facts; I thought they did it somewhat cleverly". Essentially, through learning (anything like Norwegian or German), a young person like me has to learn what human nature means.
Bakar Brennus   Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:15 am GMT
Modern Standard German is based on High German.

It's hard to learn Low German because it's barely spoken anymore, except amongst older people, of course.
Earle   Fri Mar 07, 2008 6:36 am GMT
Hmmm... I had a German exchange student for a year in the early '90s. Both his mom and dad were "flüchtlinge," he originally from Stettin, she from Königsberg. They'd settled in the northern part of Hessen. In talking to the father, his complaint was that the locals weren't friendly and he had a hard time talking to them, since, in the local bistros, they only spoke "Platt." I'd add that both parents spoke, to me, very clear, understandable Hochdeutsch. Of course they were from the East. Around the same time frame, perhaps a few years later, I was talking with a friend, originally from the Rhineland, about the migration of people from the former GDR to the west, after the Wall fell. She expressed a surprising amount of bitterness about the way they were, in her view, "coddled." Part of her emotion was about dialect. She resented that the German they spoke was, by definition, "proper" (eigentliches) German...