Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Norwegian Complete Course(book and cd pack) (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses) (Norwegian Edition)

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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. (It has the cover with the pastel houses on a black baground.)

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A few of the other reveiwers have complained about some of the vocabulary being out of date.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.

The book is laid out very clearly and describes the basic parts of the language so a beginner can easily understand. My only complaint is that the book is sometimes a little out of order with the audio CD's. Other than that, it's a great introduction to the language!

Having now plowed through 3 different beginning Norwegian texts, I would say that this one is hands down, the best of the lot. The Kari Bratveit book (Colloquial Norwegian)is, by contrast, a frustrating timewaster in that new expressions and words are introduced without explanation. This book on the other hand is very user friendly, very comprehensive, engaging in its story line and thoughtful in its grammatical explanations. Highest marks to Ms. Simons for an outstanding work.

This series is hit or miss. This is the third language book I've used from the Teach Yourself series, and it is by far the best I've encountered so far. ("Improve Your Spanish" was marketed as an intermediate book, but had an annoying mix of very basic lessons and advanced lessons with no happy middle, and "Teach Yourself Czech" was NOT a book for beginners.)

The material in the book is good for beginners, it starts with realistic dialogues and useful words. The important words and phrases are repeated in different contexts to make sure you understand their proper use and commit them to memory. Basically, the material does not progress too slowly or too quickly. Finally, a happy medium! :) The audio CD's are also quite helpful, the speakers speak slowly and clearly (but not too much so) which allows the listener a chance to examine the tonal qualities of the language that can be so hard to replicate when learning from a book alone.