Public reviews: Janus [bn.com], Strandskogen [amazon.com]

Reviewed by: Norris Weimer

Norwegian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar: A Practical Guide to the Mastery of Norwegian
Louis Janus
Passport Books
1998
ISBN 0-8442-8596-X

Norwegian: An Essential Grammar
Åse-Berit and Rolf Strandskogen
[Norsk grammatikk for utlendinger]
translated by Barbara White
Routledge
1986
ISBN 0-415-10979-5

As you learn Norwegian, you probably have a textbook and a dictionary. The textbook is a readable explanation and the dictionary is a reference book. Chances are you don't have a grammar book. I want to convince you that you also need a grammar reference book.

Hopefully, your textbook has provided you with a clear and concise overview of the Norwegian grammar. In that case, your only complaint may be that it is hard to find the section which talks about a particular point, when the inevitable question comes up. Or you might find it helpful to get a fuller explanation and some more examples, perhaps even a second opinion. In any case, a grammar reference book is very handy. Here are two that I can recommend.

I'm often forgetting some little grammar point, or I am unsure of it, so I find a grammar reference book a great help. Judging by many of the questions asked on Norskklassen, lots of other people would too!

Learning a language amounts to learning a bunch of words and learning how to put them together into sentences. Vocabulary and grammar. There's always a lot to learn, but at least Norwegian has a relatively simple grammar. As an illustration of simple, take Spanish pronounciation. Knowing a few simple rules, if you can see how a Spanish word is spelled, you know how to pronounce it. Compare that with English, where you have some general rules, but you also have a *lot* of exceptions. The worst case would be if there were no general rules and you had to memorize each individual word.

Grammar is like that in general, rules and exceptions. This explains why grammar has a bad reputation. It's all in the presentation. If a book presents it as lot of little unrelated details, it's overwhelming and confusing. To be clear and simple, the book needs to paint the big picture, to give the overview of how it works, and it needs to show the general patterns. To be sure, there *are* exceptions and lots of little details, but there is a time and place for them -- after you're confident with the general rules. Which is why a good textbook is not necessarily a good reference book. A grammar topic may be covered in several places in a textbook, saving the parts the student isn't ready to deal with until later on in the book.

One of the first things people who are just starting to learn Norwegian look for is a verb book, but you won't find any Norwegian version of "201 Polish Verbs" or "501 Spanish Verbs" -- because it isn't necessary. Norwegian has reduced a long list of rules and exceptions to a much shorter list of rules and exceptions.

Both of the books I am reviewing today are very good. You may want to know which is better. But I've decided that that is not the proper question. Which is, "which is better for me?". The two books here are at different levels, and there is a tradeoff which comes with level. The lower level book will be clearer but simpler. The higher level book will be more detailed and more definitive, but more difficult. If in doubt, get both!

I'll start with the book by Louis Janus. That name should be familiar to people in Norskklassen because Louis is a frequent contributor to the list, often giving helpful answers to people's grammar questions. His book is a very clear summary of Norwegian grammar. It is very readable -- not something you usually find in a reference book! He gives examples for everything (it's important to see things in use), and he gives examples of common errors. No complaints at all. It's too easy! (That's a joke; see above). It's actually just right for beginning students I think.

A teacher could easily use this as a textbook, if he/she supplemented it with exercises etc and was careful to tell the students exactly what parts to read each day. Presumably not in a linear order. Most people would not try to read the dictionary from a to z (or a to å). So what is the best way to read a book like this? Browse? Read a little every day? Read quickly to see what's there, and read in detail when you have a problem? Whatever works for you.

The other book is translated from Norwegian. Although it was specifically written for non-Norwegians, I think the original was probably written for students actually in Norway -- who therefore are probably also more advanced students, not beginners. In any case, this book is more advanced. If you want anything more complete and definitive than this, you might be ready for a grammar book written for Norwegians (written in Norwegian).

For example, there is a two-page three-column table of "the general rules governing the use of articles" (eg, when you use an article, when you don't use an article, etc). 19 rules, explained over the next four pages. As I said, this book has lots of details.

One section is particularly outstanding: 17 pages of "idiomatic prepositional phrases". You can get this book just for this!

It has one trait I do not like. It has lots of examples of incorrect usage. This is a good thing, but the problem is how to print them so that readers know they are wrong. This book starts them all with "Wrong:" in bold print, with that line set off by blank lines above and below. Unfortunately, my eyes are trained to see those as important points. The emphasis draws my eyes right to them and not to the correct versions! It makes me nervous that I will accidently learn the incorrect version. Linguists have a convention to mark incorrect phrases by simply starting them with a '*'. (Louis Janus's book follows this convention.) But it's more a matter of the way it stands out than the actual symbol used.

Another thing that struck me about this book is that it is organized by part-of-speech. Again, in itself that's normal for a grammar book. But you could say that the parts of speech are the building materials of a language. The ultimate goal is the be able to put them together to make something. So you would expect some discussion of that. Here, putting them together into phrases, clauses, and sentences, or into subjects, objects, and so on -- all that is left to a few pages at the end. It seems like an afterthought. Perhaps that is all that is needed; it just seems a bit quick after all the detail in the rest of the book.

Minor details. As I said, both of these books are very good and would be a good supplement to your other textbook. They should go right next to your dictionary.