Spoken Norwegian

Reviewed by: Norris Weimer

"Spoken Norwegian"
Einar Haugen & Kenneth Chapman
Third Edition 1982
Holt Rinehart and Winston
ISBN 0030190657

Einar Haugen (1906-1994) is a well-known and well-respected name in the Norwegian language field. Besides writing the Norwegian-English dictionary, he wrote textbooks, did translations, wrote books on language and linguistics, and he was a professor at Harvard.

This book is out of print, but if you can pick up a copy used, it's worth having.

It is a traditional textbook. It was meant to cover a full-year university course. It's over 400 pages long and it has 25 lessons.

I doubt the tapes are available, which is too bad, since the book is based on listening to them. But the book does have transcripts of them, so all is not lost; the book is still useable.

As the title implies, this is a course for learning speaking and listening skills. There is very little reading or writing in Norwegian in this course. In fact, I found it amusing that in the chapter called "Skal du skrive brev?", George (the student) doesn't actually write a letter. He loses his pen; he doesn't have any paper; he discusses the merits of using a pen versus a typewriter; and so on.

This book is old, but... Haugen was 76 when the third edition was made, and the authors were not free to do a full re-write. They updated it for changes in the language, but they only replaced "a few" of the pictures from the 1962 Second Edition. This is both good and bad. It makes the book look *really* old. But it's also very interesting seeing the old furniture, the old cars, and just the way people looked. The grammar sections do not feel dated to me.

Speaking of history, the first edition of this book was in 1944! While the second and third editions were designed as textbooks to be used in a classroom, the first edition was not. It was "designed for a non-classroom situation, in which American soldiers would find themselves in foreign countries without language teachers but with an abundant supply of native speakers".

"A program initiated well before the U.S. entry into World War II was tapped by the Armed Forces and made a part of their war effort. The resulting publicity identified the methods [...] as an "army method," though in fact they built on [the thinking of European scholars]". The first edition of this book was part of that series.

There are two things this book is very strong in. The first is pronunciation. I quote from the start of the very first lession:

"A good pronunciation, acquired from the very start, is the best basis for learning a language. If your sounds are right, the native will put up with many errors in your grammar. If your sounds are wrong, he has a great difficulty in guessing what you are trying to say."

Absolutely right. The native speaker can probably correct your grammar. If it's worse than that, you can back off to a simpler child-like grammar. But if your pronunciation is bad, there's not much you can do, except give up and switch to English.

"The chief obstacle to making the right sounds is your English language habits. These have been drilled into you from childhood and are not easy to overcome."

"Do not be afraid to try new sounds even if they sound strange to you. At first you may feel foolish when making new and unaccustomed noises, but remember that they do not sound strange to Norwegians."

The book doesn't just cover pronunciation in one chapter and then forget it; it emphasizes it throughout. One interesting feature is that for each of the taped dialogues, there is a phonetic transcript and notes of special things to listen for. For most people, there is more detail than they need (and maybe even more than they can handle), such as how the different dialects are pronounced.

The other thing this book is very strong in is its detailed grammar coverage. Unfortunately, this means it's best suited to advanced students. Beginners won't want to know "everything". (i.e., Beginners should learn the general rules first before they get confused by the exceptions and complications.)

Here is an example of something I learned in a section which explains the each of the suffixes and prefixes, and how you can use them to make verbs out of nouns, nouns out of verbs, etc. The "-else" suffix makes nouns out of actions verbs. For example, "værelse" means "a place to be" (ie, a room). There are lots of neat things in this book which don't seem to be found anywhere else.

By the way, I am assuming that people will use this book as a semi reference book, not as a textbook. It's not really organized as a true reference book would be, but the index is good, so using it like this is possible; although it does give a feeling that this book is a collection of random facts. (There are many ways to order the topics in a textbook, but I have a feeling that the order in this one is a little bit odd.)

Another touch I like is that the glossary in the back of the book (which is very good, as you might expect from a writer of dictionaries) includes references to the pages of the text where the word was used.

For more about Einar Haugen, read this:
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/05.24/16-haugen.html