Norsknett

Quizlet: Online Flashcards for Language Learning

Today I'm giving a presentation to the language faculty at St. Olaf about the use of the online Quizlet flashcards.  Above is the Google Docs presentation that I'm going to use during my talk.  We found Quizlet last summer and have created approx. 80 flashcard sets for Beginning Norwegian I (Sett i gang I) and 40 sets for Intermediate Norwegian I (Stein på stein I). In general, we emphasize more global skills and learning the language in larger segments in our courses, but there is a place for focusing on the details as well.  We have found that Quizlet makes the mundane parts of language learning more fun as well as more efficient.

Users do not have to register to use the Quizlet flashcards that are already online.  However, if they complete the free registration, then they can create their own sets, form groups and join other groups, customize the special characters, and keep track of their studying progress.

Interactive grammar exercises

If you plan to study at the University of Oslo, you might take one of the Norwegian language courses for international students.  The Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies offers four levels of Norwegian (trinn 1 - 4) as well as courses in phonetics and Norwegian life and society.

If you aren't able to study in Norway, you can still use some of the interactive exercises that the department has put online for its students.

• IGIN: Grammar exercises for international students (Levels 1 - 3)
  Self-correcting exercises with simple explanations.
  
  
• MedVoice: Course in Norwegian for medical students (Beginning)
  5 lessons with reading texts, sound, grammar, exercises, and word lists
  By Lasse Johannesen, Harald Kamps, Else Ryen, and Wolfgang Laschet.
  
  
• TellRight: Course in Norwegian for health care personnel (Intermediate)
  5 lessons with reading texts, sound, grammar exercises, and word lists. 
  By Lasse Johannesen and Else Ryen.

Official languages in Norway

Norway is a country with a rich and interesting language situation There are two official written languages for the whole country, bokmål and nynorsk, and the Sámi language also has official status in the northern municipalities of Kåfjord, Kautokeino, Karasjok, Nesseby, Porsanger, Tana and Tysfjord.  In addition to the written languages, there is a myriad of spoken dialects that developed in the various parts of the country.

While I was looking at the website for the Norwegian Language Council yesterday, I ended up finding several other excellent sites about Norwegian language that I had never seen before.  Here are some links:

Norwegian grammar:

• Explanations with exercises (Norsk nettskole):  Bokmål / Nynorsk
• Nynorsk grammar with exercises (Nynorsksenteret): Whole grammar / Individual sections
• Updated grammatical terms for use in the schools (Norsk språkråd):  The grammar sites above use the new grammatical terms.  The biggest changes are the new terms for verb tenses and the creation of a new category–determinatives–that includes articles, possessives, demonstratives, and words expressing quantity.)

Norwegian dialects:

• Dialektor: Online dialect course with explanations and exercises (Cappelen)
• Nordavinden og sola: Norwegian dialect examples online (NTNU)
• Dialect areas and markers (Magne Vestøl)

Sami language:

Norwegian Language Council

The Norwegian Language Council, established in 1972, is the government's advisory body for issues related to Norwegian language.  The council promotes the use of Norwegian in all areas of society, provides information and advice about the proper use of Norwegian, and makes sure that the governmental departments give equal status to bokmål and nynorsk.

Today, I discovered that the website for the Norwegian Language Council has been updated with a new design and structure.  I like the colors, clean design, and the much improved organization of the Norwegian language resources.  They have also added a regularly updated "Aktuelt ord," which for today was appropriately "sommarfri."  Some of the pages I use the most often from this site are:

• Changes in spelling and grammar from July 1, 2005 (I'm a bit of a grammar geek and never had difficulty learning grammatical forms, but I find it really hard to relearn forms I have known for 25 years whenever a new update to the grammar and spelling rules is released.)
• Facts about Norwegian language
• Rules for writing and grammar
• List of Norwegian equivalents of English words / Quizzes
• Names of languages in Norwegian
• Computer terms in Norwegian
• Stortingsmelding nr. 35: Mål og meining – Ein heilskapleg norsk språkpolitikk (27.06.08)
• Online course in Nynorsk
• Online Dictionary: Bokmål and Nynorsk