Back to School

I’ve decided that it’s time for me to start my Norwegian lesson sand today was my first day. Don’t worry I won’t be over doing it; once a week, 2 hours at the Norsk Fransk Kulturesenter. It’s more a way of making my daily life easier than to master the language and I will learn how to pronounced those cute little new letters: å, ø, æ. Anyway it doesn’t help my enthusiasm when a couple of days ago I read this article:

Norwegian among the 'most difficult languages to learn to speak

A veteran professor of languages claims that Norwegian is among the world's languages that's the most difficult to learn to speak well. Russian professor Valerij Pavlovitsj Berkov, who has spent decades perfecting his own Norwegian, told newspaper Aftenposten over the weekend that the tonelag (inflection and musical accent) needed to speak Norwegian properly is almost impossible for non-Norwegians to master. "Norwegian is one of the world's most difficult languages to learn to speak perfectly," said Berkov, who will turn 80 this month. Non-Norwegians will find it nearly impossible, he contends, to speak the language without revealing that they are foreigners. Berkov is a long-time professor of languages at both the St Petersburg State University and the Nordic Institute at the University of Oslo, teaching Norwegian to Russians and Russian to Norwegians among other subjects. He also has taught English, German, Icelandic and several other languages, is fluent in around 16 languages himself and has written the 1,121-page Russian-Norwegian dictionary as well as its companion Norwegian-Russian dictionary. He's been fascinated with Norwegian since he was a child and had taught Norwegian for 15 years before he was first allowed to visit Norway, in 1966. Another 21 years passed before he was allowed to return, in 1987, and says he still doesn't know why the authorities denied him travel permission or who "worked against me." Now he and his wife divide their time between St Petersburg and Oslo. Berkov strives to stay firmly out of the ongoing debate over the various forms of Norwegian, but allowed that the language isn't well-served without a norm. He notes that broen, brua, bruen and broa, for example, can all be used for "the bridge," and that the lack of one preferred version in fact does away with the norm. He wouldn't comment, though, on whether it's wise for a country to have two official languages, as Norway does with bokmal and nynorsk. "It's stupid for a foreigner to try to tell a Norwegian how they should use their own language," he said.

Centre Culturel Franco-Norvegien

I had read in another article (that I cannot find ago to save my life) that even though Chinese is often describes as one of the most difficult language to learn, Chinese is in fact different from most other languages in that the most difficult stages come at the very beginning of the learning process, with the mastering of tones and the first few hundred written characters. After that Chinese actually becomes easier than most European languages due to the lack of conjugations and the relatively simple grammar.
 

Graphism: Michael Ciancio