Hey wow. Once again, I put it out there & the universe responds.
I say far & wide that I am studying Norwegian, and my Finnish friend Heli shows up with two Norwegian friends. Who spoke to me in slow but not mutant-slow Norwegian, & I frigging understood them. And I constructed sentences in response—not rattling them off by any means, but I could put them together. I wasn't even going by way of English, or not entirely.
I've previously studied Latin, Sanskrit, & Biblical Hebrew—all "dead" i.e. no-longer-spoken languages—so it's very exciting to discover I also can talk in another language. Even though I have gotten by in Spanish at various times, I never felt that I was conversing, just turning obvious concepts (the bathroom, the museum, the train station) into verbal symbols.
Besides being fun & patient, Berit & Tone were encouraging and complimented my ear, which makes me even more motivated, of course. Tone said, "I love that you're doing this, but it's completely insane." Which has been kind of the general response. They live north of the Arctic Circle!
I say far & wide that I am studying Norwegian, and my Finnish friend Heli shows up with two Norwegian friends. Who spoke to me in slow but not mutant-slow Norwegian, & I frigging understood them. And I constructed sentences in response—not rattling them off by any means, but I could put them together. I wasn't even going by way of English, or not entirely.
I've previously studied Latin, Sanskrit, & Biblical Hebrew—all "dead" i.e. no-longer-spoken languages—so it's very exciting to discover I also can talk in another language. Even though I have gotten by in Spanish at various times, I never felt that I was conversing, just turning obvious concepts (the bathroom, the museum, the train station) into verbal symbols.
Besides being fun & patient, Berit & Tone were encouraging and complimented my ear, which makes me even more motivated, of course. Tone said, "I love that you're doing this, but it's completely insane." Which has been kind of the general response. They live north of the Arctic Circle!