Tag Archives: Norwegian radio

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Surfing waves of sound

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Photo credit; Sincerely Media. Unsplash license.

Tonight, another pulse-pounding report on my ongoing conversational Norwegian project.

If you haven’t been following these posts, the situation is this: I know the Norwegian language well enough to be supplementing my retirement (and quite well, lately) by doing Norwegian translation for pay. But this facility applies only to the written word. I have a lot of trouble understanding it spoken.

To fix this situation, I took the advice of commenter Deborah HH, who suggested I download a radio app and listen to Norwegian radio. This project has worked far better than I ever hoped.

So here’s where I am. Each day, as a sort of sound track to whatever I’m doing, I listen to NRK all-day news (think the BBC, but in Norwegian for Norwegians). However, they turn the broadcast over to a BBC feed at night (around 3:00 p.m. my time). At that point I turn to Jæren Misjonsradio, a Christian station from Stavanger. A further wrinkle is that there’s no NRK all-day news on weekends. So I spend that entire period with the Christian station. This is not a trial – I rather enjoy it, and even feel it’s edifying me (“edification,” oppbyggelse, is a word we use a lot in Norwegian pietism).

However, there’s a sort of a whiplash effect. I understand what I hear on the Christian station pretty well by now. Enough to make me feel I’m making significant progress.

But when I get back to NRK on Mondays, I find I’m not comprehending at the same level. This is, I’m pretty sure, due to the fact that I listen to preachers on the Christian station, preaching the Bible. I can always recognize their texts, and it’s easy to intuit what they’re saying even if I miss some words. I know the jargon, and the customs of the tribe.

But when I’ve got people on NRK discussing the latest action in Ukraine, or who’s ahead in parliamentary polling, there’s a lot less predictable stuff. So I struggle a little, and have to revise my estimation of my progress downward.

Nevertheless, I am making palpable progress. And I suspect more and more that the process is more subconscious than conscious. When I concentrate on listening and interpreting, I have trouble. If I just relax, recognizable patterns swim into my ken.

I’m recognizing phrases more and more. It’s rather exhilarating, like surfing waves of sound. You’re not doing rational analysis when you do this, but responding with a kind of muscle memory of the mind.

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Listening comprehension

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Photo credit: Franco Antonio Giovanella . Unsplash license.

Still busy with my big translating project. I expect it will be done tomorrow. I worked through the weekend, and even had to work on Sunday, which I generally try not to do. But I kept the hours short that day, and made sure I gave myself time to relax on the sofa with an e-book in the afternoon. It was a beautiful day – not as beautiful as today (it almost got up to 70 degrees), but sunnier.

And a wonderful thing happened.

You may recall how I’ve been talking about “totally immersing” myself in Norwegian, to improve my conversational skills. I read the language well, but have trouble understanding it when spoken. So I started listening to Norwegian radio through an app on my phone. News from the state broadcasting channel, and a gospel station from Stavanger. Which meant the gospel station all weekend, because the all-day news channel turns into a BBC feed on Saturdays and Sundays.

So I was lying there on the couch, reading my book and listening to the gospel station. A man was preaching. And suddenly I realized I could understand him, pretty much.

I stopped reading and listened closely. Yes, I could follow him, most of the time. 75% comprehension, I’d say. Enough to follow his line of thought.

Now I need to explicate. He was speaking very distinctly and clearly, in the way of good preachers (though he was using a dialect, but I know most of the variant terms). And he was preaching from the Bible, so I understood all the quotations right off. So I’d compare my experience to someone learning to read with a beginner’s level book.

But being able to read a beginner’s book is a start. Listening to other things, I’m pretty sure I’m understanding more than I did. A week ago I was catching nothing but a few scattered nouns and verbs.

I lay there for a while with a feeling of wellbeing I haven’t experienced in a long time.

There’s a negative side-effect I find interesting. When I think about what I’m doing, there’s a small voice in my mind screaming “NO! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! YOU AREN’T ABLE TO DO THIS!”

Examining it dispassionately, I think it’s related to my shyness/avoidance. The insane guy in my head is trying to protect me from the dangers of human interaction, terrified I’m going to open another portal by which enemies may enter.

That’s just part of the deal, I guess. I’ll have to handle it.

A more pleasant side effect is that I’ve been sleeping well. As an old man, I’ve gotten used to a state of things where I go to sleep around midnight and wake up around 6:00 a.m. Then I try to get back to sleep. Usually without success. But now I turn on Norwegian radio and listen to it idly while trying to get back to sleep, and so far it’s worked. Which means I’ve gotten three straight nights of relatively normal sleep hours.

I still feel tired, but that’s got to be a good thing.