#fun fact i wrote this post twice bc i accidentally close the tab the first time lol fail

[nordic-language-love]

Hei! I feel like you've been asked this a lot XC, sorry. How long did it take for you to reach this level of fluency in Norwegian? What would you recommend a complete beginner to do (something free, if possible. I can't order anything online and the current situation means I can't go out shopping either (and stores in my country won't have anything I'm looking for) )? PS: I've just finished the first checkpoint on Duolingo! Your posts motivate me everytime I feel down.

Hi there! No worries, I always like talking about learning Norwegian ^^

It depends on what you count as time spent studying Norwegian, because I’ve taken breaks from it and I basically didn’t know what I was doing during the first year or so lol. I usually say about 4-4.5 years. It’s possible to reach that level a lot more quickly though (I was reading a post on Norsklærer Karense’s facebook group and some people were like “yeah I went from zero to B2 in 3 months” lol rip) but for some people it takes longer. It all depends on the time you put in, how much exposure you have, how many opportunities you have to practise and how naturally you pick up languages.

As for free resources for complete beginners:

NTNU has a free course

Memrise is a good website/app with several Norwegian courses (I recommend starting with Norwegian 1, but there are loads of vocab lists on there)

Other apps include Drops and uTalk. I’m not big on Drops, but I quite like uTalk, even if the amount of coins you earn seems to be completely random (don’t be fooled into thinking you have to buy coins to progress!)

Lingohut has loads of lessons suitable for beginners

CALST is pretty great, focusing more on spoken Norwegian, and gives you the option to learn dialects (I recommend just learning Oslo dialect if you’re a total beginner, unless you’re moving to a specific area of Norway)

God i Norsk is a course in Norwegian for adult Norwegian-learners with lots of listening, reading, grammar and vocabulary exercises

Bildetema is also good for learning vocab and is available in both bokmål and nynorsk

Lesnorsk has lots of texts of different levels (I’ve linked you to the beginner level texts)

Norskpodden is a Norwegian podcast for beginners that comes with transcripts and games to test your understanding

Norwegian Teacher Karin on youtube has lessons suitable for beginners (check out her beginners playlists)

Norsklærer Karense is a qualified Norwegian teacher - her videos are entirely in Norwegian so you’ll need some basics first, but they’re a fantastic free resource (here you can find her videos specifically aimed at beginners)

Learn Norwegian Naturally is another good youtube channel

Here’s an English-Norwegian / Norwegian-English dictionary

Some other things I recommend:

Stick the radio on in the background while you’re doing housework/scrolling tumblr etc. You won’t understand anything at first, but that’s not the point - the point is to get you used to the rhythm of the language. I recommend NRK P2 as it has more talk and less shitty English music

Keep a journal. By that, I don’t mean write about your day in detail - obviously that’s not going to happen when you’re a beginner - start by writing things like “today is Wednesday. I wake up at 8am. I eat breakfast.” The purpose of your journal is to practise using the language, not to write coherent, connected prose with perfect or even good/correct grammar (my Finnish journal entries, for example, consist of 2-3 short sentences, using the only two tenses I know). You can share it if you want, but I keep most of my journal entries to myself.

Listen to Norwegian music. Search “norsk (your favourite genre)” on spotify for playlists.

If you haven’t already, create a langblr. Use it to reblog resources, vocab lists, posts about grammar etc. Write short posts and ask for feedback if you feel brave enough (it’s scary at first, but I find getting corrections is the most effective way for me to learn). Ask other langblrs questions about grammar and vocab (even if they don’t know the answer, there are usually a lot of native speakers lurking that are always willing to help!)

Sorry this got a bit long - I hope that helps you! Also, thank you so much for your kind words, and congrats on reaching the first checkpoint on Duo! I hope you enjoy your Norwegian journey.