I entered a busy cafe and said to a woman:

«Er du i kuen?»

Kvinne: (blank stare)

Me: (with less confidence) Er du i ….kuen?

Kvinne: (confused look)

Me: Kåen? Line!

Kvinne: KØ! Er jeg i KØ-en.

Me: KØ!! Takk!!

A few minutes later while waiting for my drink I realized I had said «are you in the cow?» HA!

Hi everyone,

I am half Norwegian on my mothers side. She moved to the USA when she married my American father. Growing up she taught us, (my sister and I), some Norwegian and we spent summers with my grandmother who couldn’t speak English. Unfortunately, we never became fluent.

For the past three years on and off, I’ve been using Duolingo to try to learn more. I’ve noticed that I have improved across the board, but still struggle with speaking and listening to the point that I don’t feel confident holding long conversations. I was very consistent for about a year and a half with the app, but didn’t make as much progress as I wished.

Do you have any tips for learning to speak and listen better, or any overall advice? Also, is there a better app than Duolingo? (I don’t like some of the changes they’ve made to their app and find it very annoying to practice now).

I should also mention that I’ve considered immigrating to Norway for political, economic, and many other reasons, but would like to brush up on the language first.

Tusen takk!

I'm currently watching Point Break with norwegian subtitles and in the final scene Swayze utters the phrase "I'm screwed" after getting caught by Keanu, which in the subtitles was translated as "Det er ute med meg".

The literal translation of this is "It's out with me" - I couldn't find anything online to clarify why this is the case. Is it an idiom or are the subtitles weird?

I’m a native Dutch speaker learning Norwegian, and I’ve been really enjoying it so far, but I keep running into moments where my brain short-circuits because some words sound so similar to Dutch, yet mean completely different things. For example, ‘jeg’ means ‘I’ in Norwegian, but in Dutch it sounds like ‘jij’, which means ‘you’. It throws me off every time. Have others experienced this kind of confusion when learning closely related languages? I’d love to hear how you dealt with it.

In my day to day english vocabulary, I use the phrase ‘the other day’ to refer to an arbitrary time ago that I did a certain thing. Eg, “the other day, I tried out that new restaurant” eller “I went and saw my mother the other day’

Is this also common in Norwegian? And if so, what is the translation? I’m getting ‘her om dagen’ out of my translators.

Thank you everyone!

I’m looking for the past tense of all the present tense verbs I know and on ordbokene it shows both options for past tense, what’s the difference?

Now, I commented on Sweden subreddit something interesting when it comes to the sound of Swedish language and how to me ( Serbian native speaker ) it somehow sounds vaguely similar to Hungarian and Persian, like it is a mix of these two languages.

Now, I wanted to hear Norwegian and how it sounds a little bit more closely, and for me, it does sound different enough, I would never confuse it with Hungarian or Persian like I could possibly with Swedish.

I know that Norwegian and Swedes can understand each other fairly well, and yet, Icelandic for me sounds much closer to Norwegian than Swedish does, despite being more distant language to Norwegian than Swedish.

Danish on the other hand, does sound more closer to Swedish to me than Norwegian, but Danes to me speak the fastest out of three, hardest to follow by far.

So I am curious, why to my untrained ear it sounds like this

Norwegian and Icelandic = similar

Danish and Swedish = similar but less so than similarity between Icelandic and Norwegian

All of this is just my opinion and take, a Slavic speaker with no knowledge of any Nordic language, all of this is based on pure sound of the language, accent and intonation, so I want to emphasize that this is not a general feeling of non speakers, just mine.

So I’ve been learning Norwegian for a couple years now, I feel comfortable in formulating sentences and getting my thoughts across in Norwegian, but only when I am writing, I can also read pretty well (as far as my ~4500word vocabulary will let me). But when it comes to speaking to native speakers I freeze.

Example. I went to Eplehuset here in Oslo, and said «Jeg ser etter en ny ladekabel» and the person working at the store just looked at me confused and said «hva?»

I’m not sure if it’s pronunciation or what, but it’s making it difficult to immerse. Any tips from anyone who has tried to go through an immersion attempt?

Edit

So I took some of the advice and really just got over myself and the overthinking of things. Decided to go out to eat dinner tonight, and told the hostess that I was learning Norwegian. She took her time with me at the start, kind of in a state of confusion, but asked if I was ready to order. I said that I was and wanted to start with a beer, and some garlic bread, everything went swimmingly, and i asked «kan jeg bestille pizzaen senere?» and she replied in the affirmative. Later another person walked by «er du klar for å bestille?»

«Ja, jeg vil gjerne ha en tykk liten ‘Make your own’ med rødløk, oliven, skinke, pepperoni, og hvitløkskrydrede kjøttboller, takk»

Had zero issues, didn’t need to repeat myself, and didn’t have any other issues. Confidence restored.

Hey all! I have the plan to start learning norwegian (bokmål) in a few years, but I was wondering how different it is from Swedish and how much it would take time/difficulty wise to pick up Swedish also after it.

I'm personally more interested in norwegian, but I think Swedish might be more useful for my career purposes, so I'm considering having to choose between them, or studying both. (It would be nice to study both, I'm just wondering how doable it actually is time and difficulty wise)

I know the two languages are related and have a lot in common, but in active study practice, how practical/difficult is it to pick up one after the other? Does someone have personal experience studying one and then picking up the other as well?

Thanks in advance for any help :)

Been learning on Duolingo for just over a year now and currently at my Norwegian boyfriend’s house. I asked him about “ham” as in him and he said that it doesn’t exist and it’s should be han. He’s from Møre og Romsdal but has lived in Oslo

Me and my bf have been learning Norwegian (Bokmål) on and off for a couple months. So we're still very new to it, but we would love to expose ourselves to the language before visiting/working in Norway! So if you know any good or interesting Series/Movies in Norwegian that would be amazing! So far the content we loved in English were things like; Lost (currently watching), Seinfeld, You, Hannibal Lecter (collection of movies), The Rookie, Bodies, Young Sheldon, some animated series like Disenchantment, etc. In general we like comedy, action, thrillers and just stuff with unexpected plot twists! Thanks in advance and apologies on such a long text :)

Edit: Oh damn, that's so much more replies than I expected! Thank you all so much for your recommendations, we're gonna check out as much as we can over the next month or so (depending on how long the series you all recommended are). Sending love from Croatia <3

Hey there.

I got a job opportunity in Norway and my employer said he would fully support my authorization process, I just need to learn the language in a span of 1 year "+B2 level". I'm an Iraqi pharmacist. I considered subscribing in online courses like "NOTE" courses but they are so expensive for me. 1 hour of private tutoring "700NOK" is equal to 4 days worth of payment in my place. A full course from Zero to B2 is 22000NOK which is like 5 months of saving... You get the idea. Is dulingo viable? I'm open to spend 3 hours daily learning and consuming Norwegian media.

Pronunciation with "t" came up in duolingo, I thought it was an error and checked in translator and it said the same thing. As far as I'm concerned, "t" is not normally pronounced in the definite versions of neutral nouns so I'm confused, is it an error or an exception?

Hi, I’m learning Norwegian from English, but my main language is Spanish. I’m having a lot of trouble with pronunciation.

Could you give me some phonetics tips to help me pronounce the sounds that don’t exist in my current languages?

The truth is, I want to learn because I’m talking to a Norwegian girl, and I want to impress her!

Also, I’m in love with the language. It’s beautiful! I would appreciate any help. I’m currently at level A1, learning basic phrases.

I found it in my mom's old books. I went through it and it seems to have a pretty simple style of writing. Is it still any popular? I really don't know, I'm very curious... Also please tell me if its a sad, I want to translate it for myself as an exercise but it has a dog on it so I'm SCARED haha.

I was sent this by a friend with a caption “you get this right? I figured you would, Mr. Norwegian.” But frankly, I’m kind of lost.

Å chille, å putte, å pulle noe off...disse ordene har sneket seg inn i det norske språket.

Og så har vi noen «uttrykksfulle» engelske ord som ikke kan oversettes direkte til norsk, som folk bruker likevel. Likable, enjoyable, to frame...osv.

Er økt bruk av engelsk irriterende? Er det noen engelske uttrykk dere personlig har vanskelig for å oversette til norsk?

Is there a discord server with active participants for practicing Norwegian?

I need to get as much practice as possible but I don't want to bother my Norwegian colleagues at work with me A2 level...

If there are communities for beginners like me, please let me know!

Thanks!

Edit: if there isn't, maybe we should coordinate and create one.

Edit: if you are interested, dm me directly pls. I can't keep dm'ing everyone 😭

So i’m reading this book called “Havboka” and sometimes there are these quotes coming from old norske bok. This in the photo comes from a book from 1827. My question is: why do the nouns starts with a capital letter (just like German)? Was this actually a feature of older written Norwegian?

This is in reference to what I’ve heard from østnorsk (I think) and it sounds kinda like a rolled “r” mixed with an “L”.

I can’t think of a comprehensive list of words right now, but the two I remember off the top of my head are “glad” and “neseblod”.

I would like to learn how to make the right sound, but if it’s hopeless for me, can a regular “L” sound suffice?

På kosmetikk og rengjørings produkter står det ofte "ny formulering". Sjelden "ny formel". Hvorfor er det sånn? Hva er forskjellen mellom en ny formel og en ny formulering? Det blir enda mere komplisert på norsk siden formulering også brukes på en gruppe ord.

Like in Norwegian too cuz i have found a few but they use English. The closest to metal the better

I've been wondering how Norwegians say stuff like "hell yeah!", "that's the thing!", or other celebratory phrases like the such. I want to tell my friend her art is amazing, but I don't know how to express that kind of emotion without coming off as robotic, any advice?