Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Norwegian Complete Course (Teach Yourself Books)

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This review is for the 2003 edition with the language cd's, ISBN 0071414401. There are about 5 or 6 different versions listed on Amazon (the differences aren't always clearly specified), but this is by far the best edition.

Now, as for the book itself: It's really the only, affordable, in depth Norwegian language book currently available, and in that respect --assuming you have to or want to learn Norwegian--you've lucked out, because it also happens to be very good. In fact, the average college textbook costs about 5 times as much and is only, maybe, half as good as this book.

The goal of this book is to teach you a couple thousand of the language's most common words and the basics of Norwegian grammar. I haven't had the chance to try what I've learned, to talk with a native speaker, but, after a couple months of study, I can read the Norwegian tabloids on the internet (slowly, occasionally reffering to a dictionary and holding my nose all the while) and understand probably about 90-95% of a given article. I appreciated, I have to admit, that the author doesn't assume you're entirely up on grammatical matters and briefly goes over the basic concepts that apply to any language as they are introduced specifically in Norwegian. The only real problem I had with this book was it's exercises. There are not quite enough enough of the them and I didn't always feel they effectivly reinforced what I'd just learned.

The cds that come with the book are definitely helpfull, but inconsistent. The female actor speaks the way you'd expect Norwegian to sound, given the pronunciation guidelines. The male actor, though, has a rolling, bouncing accent that I find impossible to imitate(he sounds kind of like the Swedish chef muppet). The CD's narrator has an unbelievably bored, pompous sounding British voice -he acutually sighs between his lines!

A few of the other reveiwers have complained about some of the vocabulary being out of date. That may be true. (I don't think it's very important because vocabulary is the comparitivly easy part of learning a language. Also, you can't really expect to pass as a native speaker after reading just one book, anyway.) Regardless, I thought the Norwegian text readings were well written (for a text book)and gave me a little motivation to get to the next chapter. The texts follow the lives of two characters, John and his girlfriend, Bente, throughout the book.
They have fights (de krangler) with each other, motorcycle accidents, finally they get married and move into a trailer park (actually, I have a couple chapters to read yet, but I am hoping for some sort of a happy ending for them). It's all a little soap opera-ie, but I do appreciate that the author tried to make the whole thing a little less monotones than the average text book.

This book is the best book published by anyone to learn a scandinavian language. It's very concise and besides this language is very easy for an English speaker to learn, so you make rapid progress. You'll be conversationally fluent in Norwegian in three months, I promise!

I selected this book at random, on the advice of my friend to "get a norwegian course-book if you really want to learn" and it was the best chance i took. the layout of the course is excellent, and the dialogs are very interesting. I like the way the book tells the story of John, an British student, and Bente, a Norwegian au pair. Hey, how bout a follow up: "Teach Yourself Advanced Norwegian" :)

So I happened to marry an american and we have decided to move to Norway! Only one problem, my husband does not speak a word of Norwegian.... Till NOW! I bought him several books on the subject, but it was not until this book arrived that he actually started to feel like he was finally beginning to grasp and get a "feel" for the language. It is written in a way that forces you to use what you are taught, and it is set up so that you are not able to "cheat", but instead carefully pushing you to actively use what you are learning while the language is taking shape in front of you. Before this book he would often become frustrated over a lot of issues, with "Teach Yourself Norwegian" there is such a change in how he views his journey to learning Norwegian, it is all in all a very good choice if you are a beginner seeking out educational material for learning Norwegian.

I have bought several Norwegian books and this one is by far the best one! It is very entertaining and keeps me wanting to learn more. I have only read half the book so far but I have only had it for 2 days! I cannot wait to see what happens with John and Bente! They really make learning alot funner!

I liked the format of this book so much that I bought the Icelandic edition from this series for myself. This Norwegian book is really helping my friend (who I purchased it for) learn Norsk. She loves it. I checked it out as well and it's truly amazing. Especially for the price!

This was the first of the Teach Yourself language lessons I've used and it is probably the best one of the lot.

While it's not going to make you fluent in Norwegian, it's certainly way better than the useless Pimsleur series and it's got enough drama to keep you interested.

The key to this book and CDs is that you get to learn the grammar and vocabulary in the context of somewhat believable situations. In this case, it's the context of following the thoroughly entertaining love story of John and Bente as well as all the stuff that comes along with it (e.g. a motorcycle accident, jealousy over another guy name Knut, a grandmother blasting John for not liking lutefisk, struggling with a long distance relationship, and more...).

So while you're busy trying to follow the drama, you're picking up Norwegian as you go. I personally think this is the most effective way of self-learning a language short of constantly practicing with a real Norwegian speaker or living in the country itself.

So far, I've been able to engage in limited conversations with Norwegian speakers (both in Norway and even on a recent Angel Falls trip with a group of Norwegians). So I'd say it was somewhat effective in bringing me up from being clueless about the language to start with.

My only gripe with this lesson is that the CDs seemed to rush its way through the latter units (especially in the 2nd CD). I wish they'd at least cover all the dialogues in the book rather than rush through bits and pieces of units 8-16.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this product and liked it enough to buy other Teach Yourself books for Icelandic, Swahili, and Spanish. But like I said earlier, I think the Norwegian one is the best of the Teach Yourself lot I have so far...