Customer Reviews

Beginner's Norwegian with 2 Audio CDs

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The author Laura Ziukaite-Hansen and Hippocrene Books have really hit the nail on the head with this beginner's course in Norwegian. The accompanying audio CDs make the difference!

The author does a great job organizing the basic Norwegian grammar into 13 easy to digest Lessons. Each lesson features a well-constructed conversation (from a language learning stand-point), grammar notes and isolated vocabulary and expression lists for each lesson. The great news is that the audio CDs give a normal speed and sentence by sentence rendition of each conversation, and a complete read-out of the vocabulary and expression lists in crisp, clear Norwegian.

Finally, an adequate volume of recorded material! Most courses in this price range are too skimpy or incomplete in terms of decent audio recordings (especially for isolated students learning the language on their own). The native speakers have nice precise diction and are easy to listen to. Ms. Ziukaite-Hansen also utilizes a nice phonetic system in the text which makes the Norwegian phonemes easy to understand, and makes it much more facile to go on and pronounce new Norwegian vocabulary words once this course is completed. She also includes a lot of cultural notes on historical and contemporary Norway which is enjoyable as well.

I think this course is ideal for the new learner of Norwegian or someone with previous knowledge desiring an efficient, quick review.

This book (and CDs) is a far superior method to learn Norwegian for travel to Norway than to just grab a phrase book and go. You can easily create new sentences based on the patterns studied here, plug in new vocabulary (appropriate for your situation) and really have a powerful command for a beginner.

I love the Scandinavian languges (I've studied all five of the modern languages off and on for many years) and am particularly fond of Norwegian. This course is just a whole lot of fun and works through very quickly! One could probably complete the 13 lessons easily in 3 to 4 weeks with a reasonable study effort.

I would truly hope that Ms Ziukaite-Hansen write follow-up intermediate and advanced Norwegian courses in the identical format (with audio CDs) as this beginner's level course.

I would also plead with her to use her great organizational and linguistic skills to write a similarly structured course in modern Lithuanian (which is sorely lacking in effective teaching materials for the English-speaking learner)!!

Once again -- a great course, get it for a quick study of Norwegian!

I recently reviewed the Teach Yourself Norwegian course/book, and would like to now review the Beginner's Norwegian book/CD's and make some comparisons. In the other review (Teach Yourself), I mentioned that it was my favorite of the Norwegian books I use. This is true, but Beginner's Norwegian is an excellent book and in some ways superior to TY (Teach Yourself Norwegian). I'll also briefly mention the Colloquial Norwegian book here, as well.

Let me start with the superior points of this book:

* If your learning style tends to be visual (meaning: written word) and/or analytical, and you like to see things organized and categorized, you are in for a pleasant surprise here. This book is better organized than other Norwegian courses. Hippocrene has done a magnificent job with their recently published Beginner's Series books (the Danish course is organized in the same way as the Norwegian book).

* Each chapter starts out with a dialog. On the facing pages, there is a complete translation in English. TY does not have this translation (it only has a list of new words presented in the dialog). TY forces you to thumb back to the glossary if you forget a word. I don't want to debate whether, pedagogically, this is good or bad. But I will say that having the translation right there with the dialog saves a LOT of time that would be otherwise wasted flipping back and forth to a glossary--time that could have been spent drilling words with flash cards, which is far more efficient than looking words up in a glossary. You are either going to learn a word or not--having to flip back to a glossary will not help you learn it any faster, it will only waste time and cause frustration. Thank you Hippocrene for providing full translations.

* On the CD, the dialog is spoken at normal speed and then it goes through the whole thing again, slower and with pauses to repeat it. Very nice.

* Each chapter contains a vocabulary list of manageable size and also gives the written approximate English (US) pronunciation. I know many people think this is a bad thing, but I don't. You will not be pronouncing words as English once you have the sounds of Norwegian in your head--the reason I like this feature is that it's invaluable for showing you which letters are silent or pronounced non-phonetically until you are able to remember them on your own. If you start out pronouncing a "t" or "r" that isn't supposed to be sounded, it's hard to break the habit. The written pronunciation helps with this a lot. And if you are just learning pronunciation from the Norwegian spelling, good luck. It isn't as phonetic as it's cracked up to be. Things won't go so well for you at times.

* This book tends to have more exercises than the others--still not enough, but better than most.

What is perhaps not as good about this book?

Well, you will get a more rigorous treatment in the TY book--I'm not sure if that's good or bad because, at times, the Teach Yourself book tends to be a bit overwhelming (at least for me)--mostly with the vast amounts of vocabulary thrown out. I've had to stop, back up, take a deep breath, and relearn vocabulary several times with TY. So with Beginner's Norwegian you will not get as many vocabulary words (or as much grammar) in any given chapter. But, really, I almost think that's good. You get less, but it's drilled into you more completely. I do think that the TY does a bit better with the grammar, though. And TY is definitely more entertaining (the CD and dialogs). Then again, I don't know if that really means anything when it comes to learning a language.

Probably your best bet is to work through both Beginner's Norwegian and TY if you have the time. Then there is Colloquial Norwegian. This is an okay book. I like the varied dialects on the CDs, but truthfully, the presentation in the book is a bit scatter-brained. It's not horrible, but both TY and Beginner's Norwegian are far better organized.

Now for the big question: If you were to buy just one of the books, which would it be???

That depends. If you want the path of learning Norwegian to be a smoother one from the start, I'd say go for Beginner's Norwegian. It's a great book. If you are up for some frustration along the way and are willing to deal with a lack of practice problems (meaning you have to be creative to find your own ways of drilling yourself), go with TY. You'll have at least double the amount of vocabulary and a more complete picture of the grammar when you are done.

But still... bottom line if you're serious: get both and maybe go through Beginner's Norwegian first, then TY. Or you could even get all three (along with Janus's Norwegian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar).

This book is an excellent introduction to Norwegian! If you're starting with Norwegian - start with this book. It's organized well and presents Norwegian in a way that makes it easy to learn without glossing over the challenging parts. Of course, Norwegian is hardly challenging for an English-speaker (compared to most other languages). It it just me, this book, or is Norwegian just an incredibly easy language for English speakers? Great book if you're new to Norwegian or any other Scandinavian language. I'm only 3/4 of the way through and I can already figure out Swedish websites!

Having lived in Norway for nearly two years now with my Norwegian husband, I've been picking up on the language. I wanted a book to help me make the transition from 'observer' to 'participant'. It was a mistake to think this might be the book to do that.

Aside from the errors in the text and occasionally ambiguous translations, the thing that immediately caught my (and my husband's) attention was the mismatch in the dialects spoken by the characters and where they are supposed to be from. If you're trying to learn Norwegian as spoken in Norway (as opposed to Norwegian spoken elsewhere in the world), correctly identifying dialects with their proper locations is extremely important.

I've put this book away on a shelf and am again looking for a lesson book. Count me sorely disappointed.

Even though the reviewer below has a point regarding a few errors/typos in the book, I still think it is one of the best language guides available for beginners in the self-teach category, at least as far as Norwegian goes:
- text, vocabulary and exercises are clearly interconnected
- grammar is presented in a very targeted, concise and easy-to-grasp way (as opposed to lengthy descriptions found in other books)
- pronunciation is provided with every vocabulary entry and is reinforced via the CDs
- relevant cultural notes are interesting, engaging and provide the context for the language learning. Brilliant idea!

I also like the fact that the book doesn't promise to teach you Norwegian in 10 minutes a day.

One thing I'd like to see more of is exercises. 4-5 exercises currently available after each chapter could be doubled to better address users' need for practice.

Good points of this book:

2 CD's with:
-slowly spoken Norwegian for each chapter's 'reading/conversation'.
-reading of the vocabulary list for each chapter.

Bad points:

BEWARE!!!! There are errors in the exercises and in the answer keys throughout! In the first and second lessons the errors are enough to make you lose faith in the rest of the book.
Example:
-sometimes 'dag' is given as a neuter, sometimes as a masculine word

Other points that are found in the first 2 lessons alone!!:

The English version of the chapter's 'reading/conversation material' doesnt always translate to the 'best equivalent' in Norwegian. For example, in the first lesson, the English is: "His name is Ole." While the Norwegian version of the sentence should actually be translated as: "I think/believe that his name is Ole."

The introduction of the concept of nouns having a gender is given as a footnote!!! Instead of a Grammar point!!! For some English speakers the concept of gender in a language requires more than a mere 'footnote'!

There could easily be more exercises for each chapter.

Overall, I give this a book 2 stars and not 5 because of the errors. I haven't reviewed any other book on learning Norwegian but I have bought other language learning books. This book looks at first easy to use and learn, but the errors in it shake my trust in it.

And it really could easily have many more exercises. Beginner students need lots of practice exercises!!!

This is the best beginners' language book I have ever found in any language. I like to learn a little of the language before I visit a country, and since I travel frequently, I have a lot of experience with beginning language books. I spent a month with this book before going to Norway. The lessons were enjoyable and well-presented. I was amazed how much grammar and vocabulary I could absorb in so little time. When I got to Norway, I was able to speak and understand a wide variety of phrases.

For those who prefer memorization learning of grammar, syntax, and useful phrases over more recent teaching methods, Hippocrene's "Beginner's Norwegian" will be of assistance. This package include synchronized lesson plans and two audio disks for beginners in Norwegian.

The lessons build rapidly from basic phrases to social niceties and more practical matters such as ordering meals and shopping through being able to travel around Norway. The dedicated student should emerge from this self-paced course with a survival level of Norwegian for touristing. The good news is that although many Norwegians speak good to excellent English, they are apt to respond very positively to a visitor who is prepared to meet them halfway with basic Norwegian language skills.

This course in beginner's Norwegian is highly recommended to those with the self-discipline to teach themselves, with a little help.

I liked this book and CDs very much. I consider it an excellent help in my study for the language because it contains lively conversations and this is what I need in the stage that I am now. The only thing is that I wouldn't recommend it for the complete beginner who studies by himself. I would suggest that you start with a simpler course to learn the first words and phrases. This introductory material you can find in several sites on the Internet. But after that very first stage, get this book. It is live and real language that you will find in it.

Beginner's Norwegian (with CDs) is laid out with dialogs on facing pages. One page is Norwegian. The other is English. This is followed by a section called "Footnotes" devoted to a topic in usage. The lesson also includes a page on grammar, vocabulary, expressions and exercises. Very comprehensive. CDs useful for correction pronounciation.