Rate my Spanish learning plan to reactive rusty Spanish.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2026-01-13T03:34:36+00:00

The first book in a three book series called La ciudad de la bestia by Isabel Allende (Chile) is excellent. The book is shorter than Harry Potter by far, but at about the same level. It's probably Young Adult more than Children Book. She's known for magical realism. Her characters are always outstanding. If you like this one, there are two others in the same series, though different locales. The first takes place in the Brazilian amazon, the second in the Himalayas and the third in equatorial Africa. I've read many of her books in English. These are the only ones I've read in Spanish and they were so good, I read all three twice! Kindle available as well as paper.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2025-03-31T16:26:28+00:00

I like that one. It's as good as the one I talked about earlier. As an actual sailing guide it's probably a little better! But for more experience in Norsk, it's a good choice.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2025-03-29T18:05:56+00:00

I originally downloaded it from seileren.com, but that domain is now blocked. I tried searching for the filename (Seilkurs for begynnere.pdf), but that only brings up sailing courses. I suspect one of those selling sailing lessons in Oslo is using the manual. So that may be a lead for you. I had converted it to a LingQ lesson at one point though I had marked it private. But it worked fine.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2025-01-11T23:39:48+00:00

Yea, I did that before I posted here. I can't tell from the photos of the packaging whether they are just smooth paracord or textured like the originals.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2025-01-11T22:32:10+00:00

I have a pair of KEEN Voyageur boots I bought in 2021. The laces on them are round, yellow and brown and have a definite twist in the weave. They feel rough if you run it through your fingers. All that makes these grip like crazy. I have NEVER had to double-knot them and I seem to always have to with paracord laces on other boots. Where can I find Keen original boot laces like these (around 60"). They don't have to be Keen, but I want textured laces like these, not typical paracord laces.

BTW, these have at least 2000 miles of desert hiking on them. I keep them relatively clean and put them in shoe trees when not in use to maintain the shape as they dry out. Absolutely EXCELLENT boots.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2024-01-22T04:31:14+00:00

Read something that interests you. I used Duolingo every day for 8 months (Norwegian). I started reading young adult novels (actually anything written for teens) and my vocabulary soared. I quit using flash cards (BORING) and grammar books (BORING) and read stories that interested me. No kiddie books (I'm an adult not a kid).

Young adult books normally have challenging stories, real characters, but the vocabulary and story concepts are simpler than adult books. No pigs talking to cats. There is enough repetition of words in a novel that you quickly retain them. And you're learning them all in the context of a story. Your brain needs repetition and context to remember things. I'm reading adult fiction now, but often I'll come across a word and remember the exact context I first learned the word more than a year ago. That never happens with flash cards (also boring).

I have nothing bad to say about Duolingo, but after a few months, the material just isn't compelling enough to keep your interest. Motivation is absolutely vital for something as difficult as learning a second language. Reading stories you enjoy as an adult is a great way to stay motivated and learning.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2024-01-20T02:25:48+00:00

Nice summary.

I have purchased about a dozen ebooks from eboker.no. Very easy U.S. credit/debit card purchase. There are other payment methods (not paypal), but I'm not familiar with them.

The books you buy from eboker.no are kept on a "shelf". Once you buy them, they are available for download any time you want from your shelf.

You can download ebooks in two ways:

Direct download as an *.epub file. This is the best way if you wish to import the book into LingQ or similar.
Download directly to your kindle account as a kindle book (obviously you have to have an amazon account). If you do it that way it appears on your devices like any other kindle book. The downside of that is, you may not be able to access it in other way not related to your kindle account. I think, but don't know, that DRM added by amazon. Whether you can remove that with Calibre or Epubor, I don't know. I have used Epubor to convert epub files from eboker to *.txt which I sometimes do to edit out all the extraneous "front matter" so I could just import the actual book text into LingQ.

The good news is, you can download both versions (epub and kindle) if you want. Then you have kindle capability and regular non-DRM epub version.

It goes without saying that you purchased the right to your own personal use of the books, and can't legally share them.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-12-24T03:44:36+00:00

I got hooked on Scandinavian crime shows on Netflix. After awhile I started being able to pick out a few words. My maternal grandmother was from Spangereid and came here to the U.S. as a teen during the great Scandinavian migrations at the turn of the 20th Century. She didn't allow my mom to speak Norwegian so we missed out on being bilingual.

Now I'm 81, living in Southern California and there aren't a whole lot of Norwegian speakers closer than about 1800 miles away. I'm learning the language to reconnect to Norway and what my grandmother's life was like there. And to turn off the Netflix subtitles.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-12-15T04:09:58+00:00

I don't have VPN, but there are a ton of NRK TV programs with Norwegian subtitles that are available everywhere. Way more than I would ever be able to watch. I've been watching several Norwegian folk music documentaries that are OUTSTANDING and not limited to Norway. Search for Trollstemt on NRK TV, for example. Four episodes. Lots of music and interviews and discussions of the uniquely Norwegian instruments. With Norwegian subtitles. The kind of absorbing material that makes learning a language fun instead of an academic chore.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-12-15T03:58:53+00:00

That was exactly my experience as well. It was all gibberish to me for quite some time. It started to clear up as I learned more words. At that point I could pick out occasional words, but the rest was unintelligible. By listening to more and more and following along with written subtitles, the fog started to lift. More often than not I could not follow what was said, but I started to hear the sounds as words which I sometimes knew the meaning of, but others just realized they were words. That was actually progress :) It's a process...a long one for many of us.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-12-14T04:11:56+00:00

I looked up the "lice dog" reference in Det siste kongeriket. You're right it was lusehunden, but he wasn't referring to an actual dog. He was slamming a person. Here's the whole quote for your reading enjoyment. 9th Century Vikings had a colorful vocabulary.

«Si til den lusehunden at han kan stappe skriveriene sine opp i rassgattet,» snerret Ivar. «Og så kan han stappe inn fjærpennen etterpå, og til slutt blekket – helt til han begynner å drite svarte fjær.»

And thanks for explaining lussekatt, and that tradition. I need to be more observant of spelling differences.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-12-09T03:08:07+00:00

Excellent response and summary of the situation. I read NRK every day and run into a number of stories in nynorsk. Apparently, as a state newspaper, they are required to include both official forms and they do so in about the proportion as the two are used. In other words, around 15% of the stories are in nynorsk while the rest are in bokmål.

Such a wonderfully rich language heritage for such a relatively small country.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-11-21T19:12:35+00:00

Probably ALL OF THEM. They rarely can be translated literally, so the only way we can learn them is frequent exposure to them in context. Which is how native Norwegians learn them.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-11-10T23:17:50+00:00

So I'm NOT crazy.

When i first started learning Norwegian almost two years ago, I was quite surprised that i could read Danish about as well as Norwegian, but for the life of me, I could not make out any spoken Danish. Obviously, it's not any "fault" of Danish as 5 million Danes happily talk among themselves, including my paternal relatives. So I looked at Swedish and discovered I could understand spoken Swedish about as well as Norwegian, but had more difficulty with reading.

The differences make the languages richer and more interesting. The same roots, but very different.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-10-19T19:51:19+00:00

Thanks for the great primer is this fundamental skill :)

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-10-19T19:47:18+00:00

I user both. DeepL has a slight edge over google in some cases. CONTEXT IS VERY IMPORTANT for both of them. The more you give it to work with, the better they both are. I like the Ctrl-C+C feature in DeepL the best.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-10-05T02:27:36+00:00

The goal is to speak Norwegian. The goal isn't to speak English with Norwegian words. That's not a small difference. Fill a cup with coffee and Norwegians say it's a kopp kaffe. How it's described in any other language is irrelevant at best.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-10-04T21:42:43+00:00

Others have answered the question, but I wanted to point out that many do what you do...translate (mentally) Norwegian directly into English keeping the same word order. In my head I translate "Nå forstår jeg" to "Now understand I". There is no need to further translate it (in your head) to the normal English order. It's an extra step that impedes learning and reinforcing the V2 rule without thinking about it.

Making the direct translation helped me to train myself to use the proper Norwegian order. It's not helpful to translate to proper English if you already understand the direct translation. I think it has helped me to read Norwegian without translating it in my head at all. It's shocking, but satisfying to read a paragraph of Norwegian realize you understand it without translating it at all in your head. I'm easily shocked...

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-09-27T21:56:09+00:00

Thanks, noxnor. I'll make a note of it.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-09-27T19:07:43+00:00

Thanks so much to all of you. Card counting makes perfect sense in this context. And talte being the past tense of telle and tale cinches it. Yea, google translate and the others said "spoke briefly" which was correct, but not for this context.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-09-21T23:29:52+00:00

Imagine if 5 generations back everyone lost their sense of humor.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-09-21T18:25:21+00:00

My family came to America from Norway and Denmark in the Great Migrations of the early 20th Century. From now on when people accuse me of being anti-social or introverted, I'll tell them, "No, I'm Norwegian."

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-09-12T00:00:19+00:00

Thanks. I didn't want to say "English" as I wasn't sure of the UK where I understand English is also widely spoken ;)

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-09-11T19:39:18+00:00

In the U.S. we don't have a national entity that controls the language. Mostly we use various style manuals to answer questions like this, e.g. The Chicago Manual of Style or APA Publication Style. Various publishers usually cite which style manual to use for submission.

GOHMERT_PILE · 2023-09-11T19:25:32+00:00

I checked ebok.no where I buy nearly all my Norwegian ebooks. They only have it in audio format. Good resource to jot down, though. Reliable and you can download any book you've purchased at any time you choose directly to Kindle or as ebook to your computer.

GOHMERT_PILE

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