Tia's Birthday

Today is Marianne's sister's Birthday. So as with Pål's its another great excuse to discuss some Norwegian. 

Firstly though just to say a massive Happy Birthday and Gratulerer Med Dagen to Tia.

Now Tia's real name is Cathrine, this seems like a very English name until you hear it pronounced in Norwegian, where it sounds like Katrina. This was another really easy way for me to learn some rules about the language. Firstly, like Marianne's you pronounce the e at the end of words, and it sounds like an a, simple enough, and also Norwegians don't have the 'th' sound that English do. Although I have just discovered that they used to in the form of another letter 'ð '  which no longer exists, but anyway.

Discovering these kind of basic rules and having a memorable reference to them I found essential when first learning Norwegian and it wasn't long before I found I was capable of basically reading Norwegian, if somewhat slowly and usually having very little idea of what I was saying, but still understanding these basic grammatical rules was if nothing else a good start. 

Progress is as always slow but I have massively increased my vocabulary, despite this the confidence knocking blow always comes when listening to full blown Norwegian conversations at normal speed and being lucky if I can hazard a guess at what's going on. Usually after about 4 or 5 sentences I'm lucky if I can remember my own name, and what planet this alien language is from. 

You have to start somewhere though, and started I have and I intend to continue with enthusiastic / foolish optimism. 

Me, Marianne, Tia and Pål in Norway.