The struggles of learning a new language

I remember one of my first days working at the laundromat. A colleague looked at me and asked:
“So, from now on, we’re speaking English here?”

It’s easy to fall into that rhythm. To get used to the kindness of Norwegians and their ability to adapt.

In those first days at work, the only Norwegian words I knew were “hello” and “goodbye”. Still, I forced myself to answer:

“Of course not”.

I tried to sound confident when I added:

“You speak Norwegian. I’ll adapt.”

So that’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since. To speak Norwegian. Because that’s how you learn a language, right? You just… speak it.

As a Dutch, I do have an advantage. Grammar feels familiar, sentence structures overlap, and some words are even similar. But still… finding the words in the moment is something else.

It would be nice if, in real life, conversations came with a learning curve. If, in the beginning, you’d only be exposed to people who speak very slowly, with the level gradually increasing over time.

But there isn’t. You just get dropped straight into conversations where responses are expected on the spot. So I’m trying to keep up.

I’ve been listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos and translating songs I sing along to in the car, hoping my pronunciation will improve somehow. “Brain soaking,” as Chris Lonsdale calls it in his TED Talk: “It doesn’t matter if you understand it or not. You’re listening to the rhythms, the patterns that repeat, the things that stand out.”

And yes, that stragedy pays off. Pretty quickly, I was able to survive a trip to the supermarket.

When I realized that, I told myself: alright, now you have to push through. Start speaking every day, in full sentences.

At work, though, things usually go like this:

I arrive with a confident “good morning” and “how are you?” in Norwegian, to set the tone. Secretly I’m hoping I don’t get the question back, because that’s when things get awkward.

“I doing well, thanks, eehh… hihi… thanks… ehh…”

Every time I lose track, my colleagues kindly step in, switch to English and create a situation that feels understanding and comfortable anyway. And since this happens all the time, we basically just speak English.

So yea.. their fluency in English is both a blessing and a curse. If it continues like this, I still won’t speak Norwegian by the time I retire.

For now, though, I hide behind a solid excuse:

The people here speak in dialect…

It took me a while to even notice the difference, but now that my textbook Norwegian is improving, I can hear it. Honestly, it sounds like a whole other language to me.

It’s a bit of a struggle. At home, I feel like I’m really improving. I’m getting better at breaking sentences down and understanding more each day. But then I get to work, and it feels like I’m hearing Norwegian for the very first time again.

So how do you deal with that? Honestly, I don’t know. It feels a bit strange to learn a new language through a dialect, but… maybe that’s exactly what I should be doing?

Anyway. I can blame the dialect, fast speech or the situation at work. But at the end of the day, none of that is going to teach me Norwegian.

So right now, I’m officially done complaining about everything that makes it harder. I guess it’s better to just focus on speaking anyway.

So that’s the plan. Wish me good luck :)

Thank you for coming along!

Jule Noah