Day 1000! Give it up for Day 1000!

Today is a day a thousand days in the making.

I've talked before here about my love of language learning. I took all four years of Spanish in high school, and because of a schedule change at my school, I was able to cram in all four years of French and a year of German (all they offered, or I would've taken more) as well. I got straight A's in all of them, if anyone's thinking, "Didn't you get them confused?" My Spanish is rusty these days; I understand it much better than I can speak itbut I keep up with my French, which is easy because we're a French/English family (husband is from Belgium and speaks French with our daughter). And then, when my daughter was very young and not sleeping and I was going out of my mind (literally) with exhaustion and sleep deprivation, I began to learn Norwegian.

As one does.

My grandmother's grandparents came from Norway, from a farm north of Bergen on the western side of Norway. I'd grown up hearing family members wax poetic about our Norwegian heritage, telling stories of the ancestors who came over here- including the ones who ended up wishing they had stayed- and the things they did when they got here. Holidays were filled with kringla, lefse, talks of lutefisk (apparently my grandfather was indeed a fan), and herring in cream sauce, and I grew up admiring Norwegian rosemåling. You know, the normal stuff for a kid of Norwegian descent.

With my love of languages, I'd always wanted to learn Norwegian, but when I was growing up in the 80's and 90's, the resources weren't there. Like, at all. Never once did I see any kind of book that taught Norwegian in the foreign language section of any bookstore or library (and I always, always checked that section out in every bookstore I ever went to!). I would have snapped that book up SO fast. I did stumble upon a Norwegian Bible in a thrift store when I was about 25 years old (for a quarter. A QUARTER. Do you have any idea how expensive books are in Norway? WAY MORE THAN A QUARTER. Had anyone tried to take that Bible away from me, I might have actually bitten them), and that was my first book, but I had no way to read it.

Until I learned about Duolingo.

When I learned about Duolingo, they had only recently released their Norwegian course. I was in the throes of extreme sleep deprivation with my daughter, and it had hit all parts of me really, really hard. I was crying all the time and losing patience extremely quickly, I was eating large amounts (apparently this is a thing; when your brain isn't getting the sleep it needs, it tries to make up for it by taking in extra food. I only learned that later, but it made me feel better about my dietary habits back then), my body ached all over at all times, and I couldn't focus on anything, especially not books. That last one really upset me, because reading is my lifeline, and to not be able to do it made me feel even less like myself than I already did. So when I learned that Duolingo offered a Norwegian course, I sat on the info for a bit, wondering if I could even manage it with my worn-out brain. After a bit, I decided to go for it. "Why not?" I thought. "I always said if I got the chance..."

And I took that chance and ran with it.

If you can't read the writing in the circle, it says '1000 day streak.' That's 1000 days of reading, writing, listening, learning. 1000 days of studying the language of my ancestors, of listening to the radio and watching TV. Oh yes, you can watch TV programs in Norwegian in the US. Obviously everything that's available in Norway isn't available here, but there are definitely things to watch. SKAM was phenomenal (so much so that they've made an American version as a webseries; I saw the first episode and...it wasn't actually terrible. If I get time, I'll watch the rest). Karl Johan is brilliant and hillariously funny. It's a comedy show, and I even made my family watch a few scenes (I translated for them) and they enjoyed it as well. Both shows are available with subtitles; I keep them on when I watch but focus on hearing what is being said, and I notice a HUGE uptick in my understanding of the radio when I do that. It's a technique I recommended to my English language learner when I was tutoring English as a second language, because it helps THAT much. 

The amount of pride I feel in being able to understand the language that my great-great grandparents spoke isn't something I can put into words. It's something I never thought I'd get the chance to do, something I wasn't even sure I could do when I started, but I did it, I kept at it and followed through and I plan to keep at it in the future as well. Norwegian is an absolutely beautiful language- when I first started learning, I actually didn't know what it would sound like. I'd seen it (that twenty-five cent Bible, remember), but I'd never actually heard it spoken, and when I finally heard it, I stared at my iPad (which was playing a Norwegian language radio station) in absolute wonder, because it sounded so beautiful to me. It still does after a thousand days.

 1000 again, right up top. :D

The screenshots come from the app on my phone, but if you're starting out with Duolingo, use the computer. It's harder that way, more comprehensive, and they make you write out full sentences and not just choose words from a word box. The app is easier, but you have to consider what you want more: for things to be easy, or to really and truly learn? I've completed the Norwegian course, but I still keep up with using it, and I'm going to get through those books in that first picture (I've already gone through about half of one of them, and I can read all the stuff in the back of the book- go me!- so Duolingo gives a great start on the language, although I wouldn't recommend that it be your sole resource for it). I have a decent grasp on how the language works, but I'm definitely interested in expanding my knowledge and my vocabulary, and improving my grammar.

And in case you're wondering (because of course you are!), yes, I do listen to Norwegian music! (You were definitely wondering that, weren't you?) I've had Bare Min by Morgan Sulele as my ringtone for ages now; the song is just so happy-sounding (a lot of his songs have that super upbeat vibe to it, which always puts me in a good mood). Innertier, Katastrofe, and Robin og Bugge are other Norwegian artists that I've discovered during my language-learning journey.

So there we go! Happy 1000 Days of Learning to me. I'm pretty proud of this accomplishment. :)

"Harry...Tu es un sorcier": studying French with Harry Potter.

Both books are pretty well used!

It's Harry Potter, en français!

My fascination with foreign languages started during a Girl Scout field trip to the local library in second grade. The children's librarian was giving us a tour of the library, pointing out where the fiction was shelved (something I already knew, since I was already an avid reader and frequent library patron), where the music was kept, etc... And then we headed for the nonfiction. "This is where we keep the foreign language books," she said, gesturing toward the north wall. "These are books you can use to learn another language." Wait a minute, you can learn another language???

Growing up in a culturally homogeneous Midwestern town, this was absolutely news to my seven year-old ears. I picked up a French book and was completely tickled to learn my very first sentence: Où sont les toilettes? (Seven year-old me thought this was hilarious, of course.) And from there, my fascination grew.

French didn't quite stick at first. The first language I ever really got into was Japanese, which happened solely because the library got a new "Learn Japanese for your trip!" book that summer. I must've checked that thing out upwards of thirty times. While I've long since forgotten everything other than how to count to ten, my love of languages remained. In high school, I started out with Spanish, and thanks to a change in scheduling systems, I was able to take all four years of Spanish, all four years of French, and a year's worth of German in those four years. Yeah, I was a little obsessed, but at that point, French was the one that stuck. During a brief foray at college, I lived on the foreign language residence floor (which is where I met my husband) and I was beyond thrilled to attend our nightly you-must-only-speak-in-the-language-you're-learning dinners. Which is where a very good-looking young man taught me that the French word for 'seal' sounds eerily like the king of all swear words in English.

Reader, I married him.

I've always tried to keep my French up to a decent level, and it's come in handy. Husband is a native speaker and we're raising our daughter with both French and English, so it's something I use every day. I listen to French radio, we watch French cartoons and videos (Frozen? Does NOT sound right to me in English, to the point where I cringe when I hear it!), I enjoy hearing my husband's family chat in French, and recently, I began reading again in French. This happened, again, when I moved that little bookshelf into my living room. With all those French books staring at me, I realized they weren't doing me any good if I wasn't using them. And so I grabbed my copy of Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers and dove right in.

Since I'd already read a few chapters before my daughter was born (she's, uh, four now), I started where I'd left off, Chapter 6, and I'm happy to say that I've got one chapter left! As I'm reading, I write down the vocabulary I don't know and then enter it all into Anki, an online/app-based spaced repetition flashcard program. And then I study the cards until I get to a certain grade, and that's when I move on to the next chapter. It's proved enormously helpful in learning new vocab; I've already used some of what I learned. But I already knew how helpful it was, because I also used Anki when I learned some...

Norwegian!

Told you I was language obsessed.

Why Norwegian? Family history, for starters. My great-great grandparents came to the US from an area north of Bergen somewhere around 1890, so I've always been a big fan of all things Norwegian. And when my daughter was young and not letting me sleep for more than 3-4 hours a night (and those were not even continuous hours, sigh), I coped with my near mental breakdown (I wish I were exaggerating here) by learning Norwegian. There are worse coping skills, I suppose. 

I learned enough to be able to watch three seasons of the Norwegian TV show Skam (I never did get to that fourth season, although I wanted to), along with plenty of episodes of Karl Johan (this show is seriously pee-your-pants funny. I'd wager that it's worth learning the language solely to watch it). I'm pretty proud that my language abilities progressed that quickly, especially during a time of my life that was pretty difficult.

But for now, even though I utterly adore Norwegian, I'm focusing on French. My daughter is going through a phase, completely normal for kids raised in bilingual households, where she doesn't want anything to do with the minority language. When we speak to her in French, she answers in English; she prefers watching TV in English; she wrinkles her nose when prompted to use a French word instead of an English one. She understands it perfectly well; she's just incredibly stubborn, and this is something a lot of families like ours encounter. So we're trying to incorporate as much French into our days as possible, because we're not letting her get out of this family as a monolingual. ;) 

And what that means is that Mama needs to be continually working on her French, because she didn't grow up speaking it. So that means reading, listening, and studying...here with the help of Harry Potter. We own all but the last book, and I'll search that out when the time comes. After I finish with this book, I'm going to work with a grammar book until that's completed, and then move back to fiction, followed by another grammar book. I'm actually looking forward to doing more grammar work; maybe it's weird, but I've always found grammar enjoyable. 

This book has been a good lesson in follow-through. One sentence, one page, one chapter at a time, it's been fun learning new words and phrases, and re-reading the story. There were parts I'd forgotten, since it's been like 16 years since I read the first Harry Potter book (in English). I'm so glad I've gotten back into studying French, and I'm really looking forward to continuing on with my studies.

Are you a language learner? I'd love to hear about your experiences, what's been successful for you, what materials you use. We language lovers have to stick together!