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^ Indeed! We have some funny comics, like Nemi, Kollektivet and Radio Gaga, and quite a few foreign comics have been translated into Norwegian.

That's fitting
Gratulerer!


Perfect
You will probably also like to know that dog is 'hund'.
Goat: geit
Rhino: Neshorn
Cat: Katt

Duolingo needs to get Finnish soon, before Norwegian overtakes it in my affections. It's so easy.

ä

Yes, Norwegian and Swedish are easy to learn. Probably Danish, too, but its pronunciation is weird, to put it mildly.

Yes, I'd heard that about Danish.

Danish and Swedish have been available for a while. I tried out Swedish at the beginning, but I decided to wait for Norwegian. Apparently if you speak Norwegian you understand more of the others, and the country just interests me more.

Yay, nice to see a pic of what it looks like on Duolingo!

You find it easy? I've heard that Norwegian is considered somewhat hard. Do you even find it easy to deal with nouns having gender? And that the end of the noun changes instead of putting a word in front of it as is done in English, German and French? (Sorry, I don’t know the English word for that.)
I mean like how krabbe becomes krabben, like crab becomes the crab.

There are things I find much easier in Norwegian than English, like how we don’t use capital letter for nationalities, languages, and names of weekdays and months. We only use capital letter in actual names. That took some getting used to for me in English.
Same with nouns in German, to say nothing of German grammar.

As for Norwegian versus Danish and Swedish, I’ve read on SVT’s text-TV that a survey showed that Norwegians have an easier time understanding Danish and Swedish than the other two nationalities have in understanding the Scandinavian languages not their own. The same survey showed that Swedes have the most problems understanding their fellow Scandinavians, while Danes aren’t very good at telling Swedish and Norwegian apart.

Most Norwegians think Swedish is easy to understand in speech but hard to read, while the opposite is true for Danish. I don’t find Swedish hard to read, possibly because I’m used to reading it, but I do find most Danish speech next to impossible to understand. I also find it somewhat hard to read, it comes off close to the kind of Norwegian used in books from the 1930’s. It’s not hard exactly, just… I’d rather read Norwegian, Swedish or even English. I’m not very used to Danish.

We visited Denmark when I was 9, and I was unable to understand Danish. I’ve also had a very hard time understanding Danes in adult age, the few times I’ve interacted with any.

I would think that you would be able to understand a lot of Danish and Swedish if you learn Norwegian. They are very similar, just be aware that there are some false friends there. One of the most well known is rolig, which either means calm/quiet or fun, depending on whether the speaker is Norwegian or Swedish.

Genders are a bit annoying to remember, but of course I am used to that with Italian.

And the end of the word changing (en krabbe - krabben). Well, it is the first time I have met this concept, but I'm so used to the end of the words changing in Finnish with their different cases, that it only took me a second to get used to the idea.

I did a bit of German as school (of which I remember almost nothing) and of course English is Germanic too, so a lot of the words are recognisable. Even those words that are not recognisable are still mostly easy to remember, unlike Finnish where the words sound almost unrelatable to anything you have heard before.

I am finding it really easy, but of course I've only done the first 12 or so skills. I'm sure it will get harder as I go, and there will of course be more to remember. I'll let you know how I get on.

Words have genders in Italian? I didn't know. What gender is tartaruga?

I wouldn't know, but the way the noun changes might be exclusively for Scandinavian and Icelandic. It's no less strange to me that English (and other languages) don't. (well, now I'm long since used to it, but it seemed to lack finality at first).

I had German for 2 years in junior high. I thought it was hard, and never got the hang of it. I don't remember much of it. The grammar and the cases were hard for me to get a grip on.

You seem to be doing great progress! You've only just started and come so far. Congrats, Moomingirl!

^ la tartaruga (the turtle) is feminine. A turtle would be 'una tartaruga'.

Italian genders aren't too bad. Anything ending in a is mostly feminine, anything ending in o is mostly masculine (there are a few exceptions). E can go either way. French is much harder. to remember. There are some patterns, but they are a lot less clearcut.

I have a friend who is studying Norwegian and Swedish. He says it is particularly frustrating when both languages have the same word, but they are of different genders.

Luckily Finnish doesn't have genders, but it has plenty of other confusing things instead.

By the way, I have been watching the TV series The Bridge in the last few days (as worked on by Alex and advertised on WP). Have you seen it? Even though it's in Swedish/Danish, I've managed to recognise a few words.

I don't have a lot of time to spend on Norwegian, but I've decided I like it too much to give it up. I will try to maintain what I have done, and maybe do one or two new lessons a day when I have time.

I'm desperately hoping for Finnish to be added to Duolingo. The system just works really well for me, the way it is laid out so you always want to complete just one more skill, before you know it you have done a quarter of the course.

Ah thanks.
I once met someone who would call all collies and cats “she” because she thought they were so cute. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense that turtle is feminine.

Genders seem to be pretty easy in Italian then. There is no such rule in Norwegian.

Sorry to be a pain, but do you know what gender ‘tortue’ is? I’ve never had French at all. I didn’t even know French had genders. I thought it was just “le” like English use “the”.


Yeah, there are plenty of words that have different genders in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Norwegian is by far the language with the most feminine nouns.
And to add to the fun, there are some that are optional, although some are only used in specific dialects. I swear all the optional forms will ruin the language in the end.


Yeah, so I’ve gathered. Like cases. Based on German, I’m not a fan of those.


No, I haven’t watched The Bridge. It has been aired here, but I’m not into crime series.

It’s really impressive that you recognized words watching it though! You’ve only just started looking into Norwegian, and you recognize Swedish and Danish!


I’m glad you like it that much There are Moomin books available in Norwegian too. Just saying.

You have really come far in a very short time!

It would be wise to maintain what you’ve already learned, yes. It’d be annoying for you if you had to repeat it. At least I find it annoying when I forget something I have learned.

It’s so good when one finds a method (for anything really) that works. I hope they’ll add Finnish there too. You’ll keep me posted, right?

You are not being a pain at all.

Turtles are feminine in French as well:
La tortue (the turtle) or Une tortue (a turtle).

What kind of TV shows do you like to watch?


I'll definitely have to look those up at some point. I don't even have a Moomins book in Finnish yet.

I do keep an eye on free kindle books offered on amazon. One came up in Norwegian a few weeks ago, so I downloaded it. It looks like some kind of thriller. I figured that not many Norwegian books will be offered for free, so I should grab them when I see them.

I'll definitely keep you posted with how things are going with my languages.

And if anyone else here wants to talk about something different I won't hold it against them.

Thanks! I want to know as much about all turtle words as I can.


In general I like the genres of horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and some thrillers. Some series I like:
Star Trek Voyager, Babylon 5
the first 3 seasons of “X-Files” (before they got lost in aliens and conspiracies)
Fringe was okay, and parts of Lost
Medium and Ghost whisperer
Terra Nova and Invasion (both of which were ended after one season, gar)
The 100 looked promising (but they only sent one episode on non-pay-TV), The 4400 too
Sliders
Quantum Leap
Twilight Zone, Outer Limits
Resurrection
JAG
Tremors (also cancelled after one season)

The Lassie series (Lassie, The New Lassie, Animal Planet's Lassie)

I like sitcoms like “Friends”, “Big Bang Theory” (although ambiguous due to the treatment of Sheldon, the only one I’ve identified with from the start of the series), “Two and a half men”, "Married With Children" and “How I met your mother”.

I also like The King of Queens, Everybody loves Raymond, Black Adder, Mr Bean, Perfect Strangers, My Name is Earl, The Simpsons, South Park, Futurama and what I’ve seen of Family Guy, as well as Fraser, Cheers and Becker, but I think they have much lower re-watch value than the sitcoms above.

Pokémon
TMNT TOS

In less that half an hour a new series is starting up on TVN that looks exciting, “Whispers”.

What do you like to watch?




Which one?


Haha, all good topics welcome! Personally I don’t mind keep talking about languages, nor do I mind other cool topics.

Well, we don't have a TV, so I lose track of new series that come out. But if lots of our friends talk about something, we get it out on DVD.

I like police stuff and thrillers. I used to watch a lot of Criminal Minds and NCIS. We just watched the first series of Breaking Bad, and I thought that was pretty good.

With comedies I liked Blackadder, The Big Bang Theory, and My Name Is Earl too, and Red Dwarf (very British humour).

I'm also a big fan of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Norwegian book I got is called Desember Gata: Ingen vei tilbake by Thomas White. It's not a very Norwegian sounding name, so I guess it is a translation. It's going to be a long time before I read it though.

By the way, thanks for the picture you posted of the Moomin cookbook. I had a stroke of genius and ordered it from the library. I just picked it up today, so I will start reading it soon.

A touch of Italy in a little church in the woods, now an interesting museum, on my recent holiday.

^ooh, it's enviro!

We can see you much better in that picture. Thanks for posting.

I want that candlestick.

It is very gothic and dramatic. Although now I look at it, the candles look wonky. I didn't notice before, I was rather distracted by looking at enviro.