[Gllug] Re: [OT] speaking French in France

[Stig Brautaset]

On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 02:12:45PM +0100, Robert Bannocks wrote:
> >When I'm working in Norway I always feel profoundly ignorant.
> >Everyone speaks fluent English.  Most norwegian people speak at least
> >one other scandanavian language, too.
...
> However it is simply not true to say they all speak fluent English.
> Most under about 60 years old and can speak basic english at a
> sufficent level to communicate about basic needs, eg locations,
> directions etc; however, when you get on to more complex topics then
> their ability to speak english shows it limits.  Their vocabulary
> tends to be (not supprisingly) limited to works that are close or in
> both languages and their ability to express the relationships between
> things, eg. in space and time is often limited alough this can be
> easily worked around with a bit of verboseness or rephrasing.  

This is exactly my experience too. I find that to communicate effienctly
with norwegian friends I often have to resort to speaking norwegian (I
have some command of the language).

> Also bear in mind that Norwegian, Sweedish and Danish especially when
> spoken rather than written are very similiar and it is far easier for
> a norwrgian to learn Sweedish or Danish than it is for an English
> person to learn French or Spanish.  Bear in mind also that that Bokmal
> (the most common form of Norwegian) has a heavy danish influence.

In fact, Danish and Norwegian (bokmaal) written language is so similar
that it can sometimes be hard for native speakers to tell snippets
apart. In spoken language, Swedish and Norwegian are closer and some
dialects are be so close that native speakers can make mistakes.

> >a long term plan of moving to Norway, I _am_ putting a little effort
> >into learning norwegian, though.
...
> I would put a lot in - you will be well rewarded.  Norwegian is not
> that hard to learn finding somewhere to learn it may be more of a
> challenge in our own crippled Education system.

The University of Westminster offer evening classes in norwegian at many
levels. You can sign up on wednesday next week and the week after that.
I've not taken them, so cannot vouch for them though.

Stig
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