My first steps with Norwegian

I started learning Norwegian about 2 years ago and moved to Norway at the beginning of this year. Now I live with Norwegians, hang out with Norwegians, and work with Norwegian kids in a Norwegian primary school. In most of these interactions, I speak Norwegian. It has become the language of my everyday life. Sometimes it feels pretty difficult and awkward, but I manage quite well. I have never taken a Norwegian language course. I have not had individual lessons with a tutor. I have learned everything on my own. The process has been really enjoyable and I am satisfied with the results. This is the story of the beginning of my journey with the Norwegian language.

Idea

The idea of learning Norwegian came to me at the end of 2020. I had been working remotely with my friends from Norway for several months. I was writing about educational concepts they were developing in projects for urban youth in Oslo. I thought it would be great to do some research there, but I needed to know the Norwegian language. It was not even a plan, just an idea, but I liked it and decided to start learning.

In the beginning, my motivation was not very high. At that time, I was more focused on French and treated learning Norwegian as a casual experiment. I wanted to ease myself into the language. At the same time, I was looking for stimulating and enjoyable activities to do every morning to wake me up. I was killing two birds with one stone. I got into the habit of playing Duolingo after my alarm clock. It was not difficult. Duolingo is a gamified language learning app designed to make you addicted to learning a foreign language. It's like a video game that teaches you a foreign language.

Habit

Starting my day with 10 minutes of Norwegian on Duolingo was easy and fun. It helped me wake up after the alarm instead of taking endless naps, and by the way, it taught me a little Norwegian. I learned some basic words and phrases. I also learned almost all the names of the animals that live in Norway and ways to describe the crazy things they do... or don't do. Duolingo is a cool app, but at a certain point it starts bombarding you with a lot of rarely used words and nonsense phrases, like "Jeg er en banan" (I am a banana) or "Fugler spiser ikke bjørner" (Birds do not eat bears). Of course birds do not eat bears, but why should I repeat it 20 times in a row? Maybe if I moved to Svalbard, where it is not unusual to meet a polar bear during a walk, then all these strange things about birds, bears, reindeer and moose would be useful somehow. But in the center of Oslo, where I live, there are not many bears. This is where I need authentic Norwegian, which was missing from Duolingo.

I played with the Norwegian language on Duolingo almost every morning for about 3 months. It taught me some basic vocabulary and grammar. However, the most important thing I learned was the habit of learning every day. I changed methods and activities, but keeping the routine was one of the main keys to success.