I'm still having a hard time finding Norwegian ebooks, although I did manage to find a somewhat decent site for older, public domain works primarily in Nordic languages: Runeberg.
In the meantime, I'm still listening to a lot of radio and music. I also recently got the film "Tomme Tønner" (Empty Barrels) and am looking forward to watching that. It'll be the first full length comedy film I've seen in Norwegian.
On the Polish side, I've started reading "Linia Czasu" (Timeline), by Michael Crichton. I've already read the book in both English and Italian, and I've also seen the movie (horrible in comparison to the book, in my opinion). In any case, so far it's proven to be not so difficult, so I'm happy with that.
I'm extremely happy with the way my Turkish is progressing. I'm half way the Pimsleur course at lesson 15. I've also started listening to Turkish radio online, mostly Turkish pop, although I've stumbled upon some folk music. Pop music is much better for my needs at the moment, though. I've told myself that I won't attempt to read any news until I've completed the entire Pimsleur course, but I've cheated. I haven't tried to get through entire news stories, just glanced at them, checking the percentage of words I recognize.
Other than that, it was a fairly quiet week.
I spent Høsttakkefesten, Święto Dziękczynienia, Şükran Günü (one guess what those mean) with my sister and her family in the Twin Cities. I had a great time.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Maintaining my Norwegian
Since I'm currently trying this experiment of simultaneously studying three languages, I have to really make a conscious effort to put time aside for each one. I'm furthest along with Norwegian, so that tends to be the language that's put on the back burner and I tend to give more attention to my newest language - Turkish. In the beginning, I suppose, that's not entirely a bad thing, particularly since Turkish is a complete unknown to me. Although I'm making great strides with it, and quickly! Perhaps quicker than any other language I've studied. So I'm happy with that.
But I need to concentrate on Norwegian a bit more. I've been doing the usual movie-watching and listening to P4 Norsk, among other internet radio stations. I'd also like to augment that with some good reading, and there are some good contemporary Norwegian authors out there. I'm running into a problem with that though. I'm finding it REALLY hard to find books in any kind of electronic format, whether it's epub, mobi, whatever. Nobody sells Norwegian books in electronic format. I wonder. Is there that much apathy to digital reading in Norway?
I can find plenty of audio books in Norwegian, from the aforementioned Norwegian authors to most international bestsellers, translated into and read in Norwegian. Proof of this can be found here: http://www.bokkilden.no/ and http://www.lydbokforlaget.no/, among other shops. And I'll make sure to take advantage of that format too, although at this point I'd prefer to watch a movie in Norwegian rather than just listen to an audio book.
I can and do read the news in Norwegian too, mostly Aftenposten and Dagbladet, but I really want to read some good contemporary fiction.
And so my search continues.
But I need to concentrate on Norwegian a bit more. I've been doing the usual movie-watching and listening to P4 Norsk, among other internet radio stations. I'd also like to augment that with some good reading, and there are some good contemporary Norwegian authors out there. I'm running into a problem with that though. I'm finding it REALLY hard to find books in any kind of electronic format, whether it's epub, mobi, whatever. Nobody sells Norwegian books in electronic format. I wonder. Is there that much apathy to digital reading in Norway?
I can find plenty of audio books in Norwegian, from the aforementioned Norwegian authors to most international bestsellers, translated into and read in Norwegian. Proof of this can be found here: http://www.bokkilden.no/ and http://www.lydbokforlaget.no/, among other shops. And I'll make sure to take advantage of that format too, although at this point I'd prefer to watch a movie in Norwegian rather than just listen to an audio book.
I can and do read the news in Norwegian too, mostly Aftenposten and Dagbladet, but I really want to read some good contemporary fiction.
And so my search continues.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Horses for courses.
I have two audio courses for Turkish available to me; the Pimsleur Complete Turkish course and the Linguaphone PDQ Turkish course. The Linguaphone course also includes a 68 page book of all the dialogs and some exercises.
I've quickly discovered just how much I dislike the Linguaphone audio. First off, there's WAY too much English nonsense going on with the narrators. When I say nonsense, I mean it's completely unnecessary. Second, I can't get past a mental image of John Cleese as the male narrator. Really. It's almost comical, but not quite. The female narrator isn't any better - "Reward yourself! Have a glass of champagne! Whatever you like!" - Seriously? Both announcers are trying to be funny for humor's sake and failing.
The other thing I dislike about the Linguaphone course is the pace. It's incredibly slow. I've gone through four lessons so far with the Linguaphone course, in contrast to eight lessons with the Pimsleur course. The Pimsleur course covers so much more. Not only that, it does a decent job of explaining why I"m saying what I'm saying, if not outright, then by repeated example. I'll give an admittedly rather simple example; the phrase "Bir
So at this point I'll probably just drop the Linguaphone course and use Pimsleur for the audio portion of my learning. I have the old FSI course book which does an excellent job of doing the same explanation in written form. I think I'll be using that for my reading.
Learning has been somewhat light this week. I closed up the cabin for the season and am now in the Twin Cities through Thanksgiving, so all that activity sucked up a fair amount of time, outside my normal workload.
I've quickly discovered just how much I dislike the Linguaphone audio. First off, there's WAY too much English nonsense going on with the narrators. When I say nonsense, I mean it's completely unnecessary. Second, I can't get past a mental image of John Cleese as the male narrator. Really. It's almost comical, but not quite. The female narrator isn't any better - "Reward yourself! Have a glass of champagne! Whatever you like!" - Seriously? Both announcers are trying to be funny for humor's sake and failing.
The other thing I dislike about the Linguaphone course is the pace. It's incredibly slow. I've gone through four lessons so far with the Linguaphone course, in contrast to eight lessons with the Pimsleur course. The Pimsleur course covers so much more. Not only that, it does a decent job of explaining why I"m saying what I'm saying, if not outright, then by repeated example. I'll give an admittedly rather simple example; the phrase "Bir
, meaning "it's nothing" after someone says "teşekkür ederim" (thank you). In roughly the same amount of time in both courses, the Pimsleur course has given me not only this vocabulary, but the mechanics of the phrase as well. With the Pimsleur course I've been given all three words in a variety of contexts, so I know that "Bir" means "one" and "şey" means "thing", and that by combining the two I get "something". By now I've also learned "değil" means "not" through a variety of other phrases. So, even though the Pimsleur course may not have already explicitly taught me "Bir So at this point I'll probably just drop the Linguaphone course and use Pimsleur for the audio portion of my learning. I have the old FSI course book which does an excellent job of doing the same explanation in written form. I think I'll be using that for my reading.
Learning has been somewhat light this week. I closed up the cabin for the season and am now in the Twin Cities through Thanksgiving, so all that activity sucked up a fair amount of time, outside my normal workload.
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