Charles 2.0

With an idea given to me by our teacher, I have come up with a productive way to share my progress with the Norwegian language and culture. I am designing a wiki on wikispaces that I call NorseLearner. It will be all about the Norwegian language and culture and as soon as there is enough information up I am going to share it with everyone. I’ll be working on it and updating it every week with some new information. Hopefully when its ready, you can all learn something and enjoy it.

Hello everyone! This 20% time I’ve got something really cool to share with everyone. First is the more informational part. The first site I have discovered is a site with a daily lesson which I have been taking notes on for the past couple of 20% times. Norword Lessons is a site that has a lesson per day on Norwegian vocabulary and grammar. It even has a small section on Norwegian culture for each lesson. The other thing I found (thanks to my teacher) is a website called Voki. It allows you to create an avatar and add a voice to it. I have created one for my 20% time that I have named Camilla (which is a common Norwegian woman’s name that I have learned from Noword Lessons). I now plan on letting her say a few things in Norwegian (as it is an option on Voki) so that you can get an understanding on how to pronounce some words. If I can figure out how to get wordpress to work in my favor, I will share Camilla with you, but it appears that even as a widget, it’s not going to work.

Today is Earth Day and I just happened to find a very interesting article on Norway’s plans for alternative energy. Norway has plans to use their forests to tap into the pine trees to receive alternate “bioenergy” and studies say that by 2020 their production of this energy will have doubled.  According to the article,

“Norway, the world’s number five oil exporter, would double output of bioenergy from wood, other plant material and farm waste to total about 28 terawatt hours (TWh) a year.”

This means that in a while, they’d be able to produce way more than they need in Norway and because of that, they will be able to export it. Another method used on Norway and  the other Scandinavian islands is windpower because of the vast spacs they have in the north. Hopefully they can help set the trend for the rest of the world so that the planet can get the much needed help it deserves. With that said, we can all just hope to keep it green!

Photo:  cc Windpower, Gulf of Bothnia, Oulu, Finland by Laura & Garrett on Flickr

Please try to excuse my late post, but I have honestly been working on my Senior portfolio quite a bit lately. Anyways, this 20% I was looking through del.icio.us favorites tagged Norway and I found a particularly helpful page that helps with pronunciation. It is an article that talks mostly about learning the language through using it firsthand, but the pronunciation guides are helpful. In fact, they helped me realize some mispronunciations I have been making.

Today I explored the Sons of Norway website some more and found a section about recipes for Norwegian dishes. I was looking through them and found a recipe for an almond wreath cake called Kransekake. I plan on trying to bake one with the help of my mom. It would be really cool to share with the class once I make some. I haven’t had a chance to make one yet but once I do I’ll definitely share with everyone the outcome.

Photo: cc Kransekake by hfb on Flickr

For as ironic as this may sound, although this has been the 20% time in which I have progressed the farthest, I unfortunately have nothing interesting to share. I have been practicing Norwegian a lot and am even getting pronunciation down. Once I find a way to prove it I definitely will share! Miss Wagner suggested recording me saying certain sentences and phrases and I think that’s what I’ll end up doing. So although this post hasn’t been my most informative, think of it as a promise for even better ones to come!

God dag (hello)! This 20 % time was very productive because of a website I found called Sons of Norway. I found it while looking at a Yahoo! forum in my Google Reader and I checked out a link that Yahoo! user called bryan_q. He gave a link directly to a page called Norwegian in 5 Minutes a Month which is by the Sons of Norway organization. I sort of looked through all the lessons and checked out how easy it seemed. So far I don’t understand how I would apply the whole “5 minutes a month” but looking over the vocabulary and phrases helps. I guess I’m just going to go through the lessons one at a time until I understand each one. I already started using Norwegian the other day to count with me and my friends.

Today I was looking through my Google Reader and I found a nice website designed to building a network of people dedicated to learning and teaching languages. The site is called Livemocha and is, like I said, a social networking site. Its cool because you can actually converse with native speakers of the language you want to learn. They have practices you can do and get corrected by the native speakers to help you learn better. So far I have only signed up for it and once I find some people with the same goals as I (Norwegian), I’ll begin my studying on it.

Today in class I found a cool program while looking studying at Norwegian 101 called Before You Know It. Its a cool software that has you download different sets of flashcards for just about any language you wish to learn. So naturally I downloaded it and the Norwegian package and started studying. The cards come in different categories such as colors or animals and the first they have you practice is the animals list.  The program is really easy to use and even has a voice pronounce the word so you can understand how the word is said. So I guess to an addition to my homework, a daily study session with “Before You Know It” is something I’m going to add to my schedule. Soon enough I’ll be able to start saying sentences and phrases and that’s something I’m going to work hard to get to.

Photo by me on flickr

My 20% time today was spent very constructively. I found an awesome sight to help me learn the basics of the Norwegian language and a few other languages as well. I used the site to learn about Norwegian vowels, consonants, diphthongs, and how each is pronounced. I also learned a few basic vocabulary words and phrases. So  tussen takk (thank you) for reading my post!

Picture: cc Norwegian 101 by fr33thinker (me)