How One Book Set Me on the Path to Fluency in Norwegian

— Hi, I'm calling because I'm looking for an internship and would love to do it at your library.

 —  Sorry, we only accept people who speak Norwegian.

The director sounded final. I could sense he was ready to hang up.

— Men jeg snakker norsk! (I speak Norwegian!), I cried in a desperate attempt to change his mind.

I knew it wasn't entirely true. I knew he could hear it in the brief conversation we had — in Norwegian — in the minutes that followed. I don't remember what we said, but it probably revolved around the limited topics a person starting to learn a language can cover.

Navn/Name: Emmanuelle. Alder/Age: 23 år. Something about what I liked to do in my free time or how long I had been learning Norwegian, which is a tricky one for beginners, as it often involves using some sort of non-present tense.

My skills were nothing but lacking, but my fierce determination to show him I was trying and willing to learn had completely turned around the situation. I could hear in his voice that his entire demeanor had changed, and…

And I later spent the first six months of 2011 as a trainee at a public library in a town that can count a lot of "northernmost something": Tromsø, Norway.

The public library in Tromsø, Norway. Photo by harmishhk on Flickr

Why Norwegian?

Prior to moving to Tromsø, I had spent a year as an exchange student in Uppsala, Sweden. During my time there, I took a Swedish class, with pretty much all of the international students. Because I love languages, I was one of 10% who went on for a second semester.

Let me tell you it wasn't fun, and I really struggled, along with everybody who wasn't German — or so it seemed.

I also met my then-boyfriend while we were both students in Uppsala. He was French too and had gotten a position as a PhD student at the University of Tromsø right after our exchange year ended, in the summer of 2008.

I had loved Sweden and I felt just as good and relaxed when I was in Norway, so I was keen on moving there after I was done with my studies in France. From the moment I left Uppsala until I joined my partner "for good" in January 2011, I focused on "turning my Swedish into Norwegian."

Recycling my Swedish

The Norwegian and Swedish languages are extremely close. So are Norwegian and Danish, except that they are more alike in their written form, whereas Norwegian and Swedish sound reasonably similar, even though they look more different than the first two.

Here are a few examples to show you what I mean:

I love coffee.

Swedish: Jag älskar kaffe.

Norwegian: Jeg elsker kaffe.

These two sentences are pretty much pronounced the same.

I eat dinner at six o'clock.

Swedish: Jag äter middag klockan sex.

Norwegian: Jeg spiser middag klokka seks.

In the last example, you can see that it's not all rainbows and replacing an "ä" with an "e." Both languages sometimes use different words to describe things. Heck, they are different languages after all.

But they are similar enough that a Norwegian and a Swedish citizen can have a conversation together, each using their own language.

In other words, as I set out to learn Norwegian, I had some sort of basis before even starting.

I just needed to reprogram my brain to understand säng (bed) when I saw seng, and know that rolig meant "calm," not "funny" in Norwegian. And of course, learn a bunch of totally new words.

My Failed Attempts at Learning

Before calling the director of Tromsø Library, I had tried to:

• watch TV or listen to the radio whenever I was in Norway visiting my boyfriend.

• read an online newspaper specifically targeted at foreigners, with articles written in an easy and clear language. This was literally the name of the website: "klar tale," or "clear speech."

• read a children's book about a young boy who was a vampire.

In a way, these steps successfully helped me rewire my Swedish skills into a slightly different language - the few sentences that had made the director change his mind were purely in Norwegian. But they hadn't gotten me much further.

I spent a lot of time looking up words while reading the vampire book and making vocabulary lists. This made the reading a tedious process, especially since books about vampires or for young children are not something I am naturally inclined to read.

I was hopeful that living in Norway would change all that, except that:

• despite Mr Library's claim that they only took in people who spoke the language, I was never required to do so. And since I worked individually on projects I had suggested - one of them being the creation of a mini exhibition on French literature - I was never directly exposed to library patrons.

• I had very few friends…

Why Social Interactions Didn't Help

Even after I started speaking more fluently, friends were hard to come by in my first years in Norway. There is more to be said on the subject, but for the purpose of moving this story forward, I am going to focus on the impact that having more friends could have had on my learning curve.

None.

In my experience, developing a friendship requires a mutual understanding and the ability to share about one's life. Not being able to express oneself in the language of the friendship puts a strain on that.

For at least half the time I lived in Tromsø, my only friend was Katja, an American whom I had met at the library. We spoke English together.

I was still putting myself out there - I wanted so badly to improve - and had the occasional conversation with my colleagues at the library. These talks, when in Norwegian, were bound to stay superficial. I didn't learn much from them, and neither did I from the språkkafe - language cafés - I went to.

These "cafés" are quite common in Norway nowadays. There are regular events aiming at providing an environment once a week or so for foreigners willing to improve their conversational skills. At the one I went to, which was free and hosted by the library, we were divided into small groups together with a native volunteer and we would try to discuss the short text we were given.

Not only did I not develop any friendships there, but my level was as stagnant as ever.

Until I did something new, something that changed everything. Something that accelerated my learning and made the conversations I had less superficial. Something that allowed me to get a job the same month my then-ex-boyfriend moved back to France.

I started reading Harry Potter.

Why Reading is Magic!

Finding the motivation

Remember that vampire book I tried reading? Never finished it.

Remember this long vocabulary list I made myself work on as I was reading? That too killed my joy of reading, and as a neurodivergent, motivation is key.

The beauty of Harry Potter is that, since I've read it multiple times, I could go through chapters and chapters where I only knew half the words, and be completely unfazed by it.

I already knew the story. It didn't matter that I didn't understand that Ron is the funniest of the three or that Hermione forgets she can start a fire with her wand to save her friends from the Devil's Snare (a magical plant).

I knew it was there on the page, and I could move on without ever having to use my dictionary.

This made for a deeply enjoyable reading and learning experience. What can I say: I simply love Harry Potter.

Effortless learning

Before I knew it, I intuitively absorbed a series of new vocabulary, entirely from the context. Some of them were words I don't use on a daily basis, like tryllestav or heks (magic wand and witch), but I also added a considerable number of very common, useful, and widely-used terms to the database in my brain.

From that moment on, I was suddenly able to collect the compounded interests of everything that I had been doing that hadn't stuck, like talking to people or watching TV.

Having a larger amount of words at my disposal expanded my world and sparked my learning in all directions. I had reached a threshold; I finally had something to build upon, and I did: today, I am officially a Norwegian citizen, and I have a permanent job that requires me to speak and write Norwegian fluently.

A welcome side-effect of learning by reading - and enjoying it - is that I've become very good at prepositions. It was not a conscious effort: just a result of being exposed to the right way of saying things over and over again.

The special case of Harry Potter

If you're a visual learner like me, I encourage you to find a book that you truly like and know from before. However, this is an extra argument as to why Harry Potter is perfect in this situation: it starts as a children's book, but the reading level evolves throughout the series.

Book one is marketed for 11-year-olds and upward, which is pretty gentle for a timid beginner speaker. By the time you've reached book seven, your language level has increased together with the reading difficulty, and you're suddenly reading a 700-page-long young adult novel with ease.

Concluding thoughts

When I look back at my younger self listening to the radio and trying to make sense of what is being said, it's like seeing myself running around in a closed circle.

I remember that one time I was able to make out a word. I would have been able to write it, I think. But without any idea of what that word meant, I still couldn't figure out what that radio show was about.

What reading Harry Potter did was allow me to break out of that circle.

To put it another way, you need to reach a point where you know enough that you can guess - maybe not everything else but at least a little bit more.

At some point, that initial guessing turns into knowledge, expanding your - now open - circle, and you can guess even more, maybe everything. And so on, and so on.

I am not saying you shouldn't take a course. I'm even saying the opposite: before you open any book, you need to recognize what's a noun, what's a verb, etc.

But if you've been doing that and talking to people, listening to the radio, and watching TV and if you feel like you're getting nowhere, don't be so hard on yourself: it simply means you're still in the circle.

Work on expanding it, and soon you will break out.

What book will you read? Let me know in the comments!

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Originally published at Medium.com in Language Lab.