Swapping duties

I've not written anything about my Norwegian or Polish lately. Needless to say, I've been doing the usual with both languages - watching Norwegian movies, speaking with a couple local Norwegians regularly and reading a Polish SciFi novel.

The movie I watched this week was another Varg Veum film: "Svarte Får" ("Black Sheep"). It was better than the other Varg Veum film I've seen. Stunning Bergen and surrounding scenery, as usual.

I've watched a Norwegian movie every week for the last 5 months or so. During these last few months, I've become somewhat knowledgeable on Norwegian films, from the 1960s to the present. I'm thinking it's time to switch things up a bit. So, beginning next week, I'll be watching Polish films and reading Norwegian novels. I'd like to become as knowledgeable in Polish film as I've become with Norwegian film.

I'm almost finished with "Czarne Oceany" - another two to three days and I'll have finished reading it. I already have a Polish movie lined up to watch, called "To nie tak tak myślisz kotku" (English title is "Grand Hotel"). It's a light comedy that hasn't gotten great reviews, but I figured it would be a good start.

Another reason I wanted to switch resources is because I've discovered a Norwegian author that I want to read: Jo Nesbø. I got his novel "Hodejegerne" ("Headhunters"). Nesbø's known for a series of crime novels featuring the character Harry Hole. This novel is rumored to be the start of a new series of thrillers from Nesbø, so I'm excited to get started with it.

A look to the past and a little SciFi

This week's Norwegian movie was Max Manus. It was a very well done war period piece. Lots of German, but I didn't want to use the subtitles, so I just struggled through the German bits. I guess I vaguely knew of Max Manus, having heard of him when I was in Spain. He spent the last part of his life there, along with his wife, also portayed in the movie. But I didn't know how important he actually was to the Norwegian resistance. So I learned a lot from the movie historically as well.

For Polish, I've begun reading Czarne Oceany, a novel by Jacek Dukaj. It's a bit tougher read than I had expected, but I'm enjoying it. Lots of compound words that aren't found in any dictionary, so I'm forced to think pretty hard about what I'm reading. Old-school SciFi at its best!

This week, my Skype partner for Turkish conversation is on vacation, so we haven't talked at all this week. He'll be back next week. In the meantime, I've been getting into some older Turkish pop music, namely Bariş Manço. I discovered him maybe a month ago. Quite amazing for his time. And he had a very long, successful career. I highly recommend a listen!

I'm also continuing on with Türkçe Öğreniyoruz. I'm guessing another week and a half to two weeks and I'll be able to start on the forth course.

I'll mention this once again, but it's not part of my goal this year: I'm slowly going through an Ojibwe course and am documenting it at Indoojibwem! I'm not counting this as part of my goal because I have no immediate plans to use it, other than passively. That may come later, but right now, it's a purely passive thing. I'm finding the number of similarities between Turkish and Ojibwe incredibly interesting.

Music, music.

Music is primarily on my mind, but I'll document what else I've done this week, too. I get all excited about music in general in February because of an Italian music festival - Festival della canzone italiana di San Remo. I can't help it. It was the first and only European music festival I had the privilege of attending. How my friend scored tickets to it is beyond me, but I'm glad he did. Anyway, this is the oldest festival of its kind in Europe. And it's a precursor to Eurovision. There are similar song festivals throughout Europe.

On to Norwegian, I watched the Norwegian film Bare Skyer Beveger Stjernene (Only Clouds Move the Stars). It's a good family film that deals with family loss. And the girl that plays Maria - Thea Sofie Rusten - is fantastic in her role. My next movie for the week is Svidd Neger, which looks like a really interesting story. I'll recap in my next post.

Since I've been spending a good portion of my winter either in the Twin Cities or in Northwestern Wisconsin, I'm sort of in the heart of Norwegian immigrant territory. I've been able to speak the language more than I would have thought before coming up here, even if the people I talk to speak a somewhat archaic Norwegian.

Since I finished the Chmielewska novel I've been looking for something else to read, preferably another one of her books. No such luck in finding anything. I have a substantial Polish pop music collection, so I've been listening a lot to that. And it fits in with my music obsession this week.

The Türkçe Öğreniyoruz series of language courses I picked up are really good. Very different accents on the audio, and as I mentioned last post, everything is in Turkish. I'm cruising though the second course, since most of the contents of the first course I've already learned elsewhere. I also managed to find a Skype partner for Turkish, so I can practice not just writing, but speaking. We've agreed to chat twice a week, and already I'm feeling more confident. I also discovered another Turkish singer - Gökhan Özen. I'm listening to him as I write this post, as a matter of fact. I'm enjoying his high-energy music.

On a final note, I have to giggle a little at the Norwegian, Polish and Turkish top 20 charts. Bruno Mars in on all of them. I know I'm an old coot, but what's up with that?

Not wanting to write.

I'll just get this out of the way, right out of the gate: I have not been in any kind of mood whatsoever to write. At all. In any language.

But that's OK. I've been doing what I've set out to do, and that's progress with my languages.

In the last couple weeks I've seen two Norwegian films: En Ganske Snill Mann (A Somewhate Gentle Man), starring Stellan Skarsgård (very funny!) and Salmer fra Kjøkkenet (Kitchen Stories). Salmer fra Kjøkkenet was interesting to me - I've always been interested in the friction between Sweden and Norway (or between Sweden and any other Scandinavian country, for that matter) and this movie handles the subject in any interesting way. I also got a hold of Sønner, but frankly, I've not had any desire to watch a film dealing with pedophilia. Maybe next week.

I'm now on the last chapter of Rzeź bezkręgowców. I feel so much more at ease reading now, compared to when I started this novel. I now only need to look up one or two words a page. And I really like Chmielewska's writing style. Once I'm done with this novel I'll have to see if I can find any other novels written by her.

I finished the Teach Yourself Turkish course. And with perfect timing, I found a set of Turkish courses written completely in Turkish! It's called Türkçe Öğreniyoruz. The course is old enough that the accompanying audio is on cassette. No matter - I've already plugged the output of an old cassette deck into the Audio In of my PC and converted it to MP3. I bought the four-volume set at a used bookstore. I understand that the entire series consists of six volumes, so at some point I'm going to have to hunt down the last two volumes.

Since I've not been in the mood to write lately, I've also not done anything on Lang-8. I will get back to writing there.

Vinterkyss(et)

After this last week, I feel like I've gotten a fresh kiss from winter. What was I thinking, coming to the cabin in such cold weather? One night it reached -30 below - real temperature. This is in an uninsulated log cabin.

Anyway, we're back in the 20s and heading to above freezing by the end of the week.

I watched Vinterkyss, a rather sad, but good Norwegian movie that came out in 2005. Surprisingly, there was a substantial portion of the movie that was in English. I didn't mind. It served its purpose in the film.

I also put up a couple more entries on Lang-8. I'm so happy to be using it now. I've already gotten good corrections and learned things from it. And made a couple new friends in the process too! Originally, I was thinking to only write my entries in Norwegian for now, then maybe mid-year start with Polish entries. I may move that up by a couple months and hopefully start with Polish entries by March.

I've gone through another chapter in Rzeź bezkręgowców. That's coming along nicely, even if a bit slower than I'd originally planned.

And I've gone through two more lessons from Teach Yourself Turkish. I'm at the point right now where grammar is really making a difference, and as a result, it's requiring much more attention to detail. I'm happy with my progress, in any case.

Overall, it's been a pretty productive week. I've even had a fair amount of translation work. And I'm kind of amazed I've been able to do all this from the cabin.

A fantastic movie and a bit of reading and writing

I got a chance to watch Elling, an absolutely fantastic Norwegian film the other night. I HIGHLY recommend this film! By far the best Norwegian film I've seen to date. It was also the easiest film to follow the entire dialog that I've watched. I'd like to think that a week away from hearing any Norwegian refreshed my senses and that was the reason I understood so much, but I doubt it. It was just a great movie and kept me interested. There are a couple other movies that are related that I'll have to check out: a prequel and a sequel.

I've also finally begun using lang-8 for writing. We'll see how that goes. There really aren't all that many native Norwegians there, so we'll see how often the corrections come. Because I'm a free account member, I can only list two study languages. It's not a problem for now, since I'm not ready to start writing in Polish, much less in Turkish. Unrelated, by what's up with so many Norwegians studying Japanese? The majority of Norwegian users are Japanese learners.

I'm getting through the Polish novel Rzeź bezkręgowców nicely. I'm pretty happy with that. It's not too difficult for me, and I like the author's writing style. Many of Chmielewska's novels have been translated into English, so I will probably try and read her in English at some point too. Just not this year.

I'm about half way through the Teach Yourself Turkish course. I'm very happy with how that's progressing. I don't know the exact count, but I would guess that my Turkish vocabulary is at about 1200 or so words. Not bad for having studied the language for under three months.

More movies

I've continued with Norwegian cinema. This last week I watched two offbeat movies - just my style. The first was Budbringeren. Overall, easy to understand, and I liked the story, even if it was somewhat depressing. There wasn't a whole lot of dialog, so truth be told, it was really just a normal movie-watching experience. I'd like to say that it's because I'm getting just that comfortable with watching Norwegian movies in general - and maybe I am - but the next movie I watched tells me no. The second movie I watched was Naboen. An equally quirky movie, if not more violent. Where Budbringeren was easy to follow, Naboen was irritatingly difficult to understand at times. Lots of different accents going on. That one I will watch again.

I'm also watching a lot of NRK programming, now that I've found their great plugin for XBMC. In fact, I've been going through a lot of their documentaries. There's a lot of interesting stuff to keep me interested.

I'm also making a concerted effort to improve my writing in Norwegian. A while back, I went through two courses, both completely in Norwegian, the first titled På Vei, which is considered A2 material, and Stein på stein, which supposedly takes the learner up to B2 level. I used both the textbook and the audio, but never went through the workbooks. Well, I got my hands on the workbooks and am now going through the Stein på stein one. It's a nice review, and is really cementing my written Norwegian.

I'm back on track with my reading in Polish too. A friend of mine recommended I check out Joanna Chmielewska. She's primarily a crime/thriller novelist, much in the same vein as Patricia Cornwell, but a generation older. So I found a copy of Rzeź bezkręgowców (Kill all Invertebrates). I haven't really started in other than the first couple pages, but it has much more familiar language than Linia Czasu has. So I'm hopeful. Her writing seems to be very much from a woman's point of view - again, much like Patricia Cornwell - but that's fine. I'm just thrilled I found some original, engaging literature.

I've gone through one more chapter of Teach Yourself Turkish. I'm still very happy with my progress with Turkish. If anything, I wish I had more time to devote to it.

It's all about movies

This last week, I've become somewhat fixated on Norwegian cinema. I have access to a lot of movies I wouldn't normally find in Chicago, so I've been taking in all I can while I have the chance.

I should note right off the bat that I've still not watched "Kill Buljo" and probably won't for a while. I've got too many others I want to get to first.

So, I watched "Den Brysomme Mannen" (The Bothersome Man). Very quirky, very strange. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked the lead actor, Trond Fausa Aurvaag. He's in a couple other films I've got my hands on, notably "Tatt av Kvinnen" and "Budbringeren", although I've not watched those two yet. I'm looking forward to them. They both look like they'll be every bit as off-beat as the first film. I'm trying to stay with films made within the last 20 years or so. Once I feel more comfortable with movies in general, I'll start looking for older films. I have to say, though, that my comprehension level has already noticeably increased just with the few movies I've managed to watch so far. And at this rate, I'm going to become an expert on Norwegian Cinema!

I really wish I could get my hands on more Polish films. Maybe once I'm back in Chicago. In one of the HTLAL forum threads, someone had mentioned a program called IPLA, which would have allowed me to watch many Polish TV programs. Unfortunately, I would need to have an IP address originating from Poland for it to work - and Polish proxies are slow, at least the ones I've found. And to make matters worse, the program only runs on Windows - something I no longer use. I'd also like to find some sort of graded reader in Polish, since trying to read Linia Czasu turned out to be a bad idea, but I've not been able to find anything yet. Again, maybe once I get back to Chicago.

Finally, I'm continuing with Teach Yourself Turkish. I've gone through two more chapters. I'm still quite happy with the vocabulary increase this course is giving me. I also found what I think is a decent graded reader, originally published in 1948 and reissued in 1987. But I'm nowhere near ready for that yet. But it's there waiting for me when I am. I may use that after I complete the Teach Yourself course.