NORWAY III

During my time in Norway it never happened to me that a conversation wasn’t impossible. I was surprised about their great English skills. I got the impression that everyone in Norway is able to lead a proper conversation in English. After some research and talks about it, I found out that Sweden is the number one in the non-native English skills in the world. Norway and Denmark follow and are also on the top list. Norway is a land full of nature and loneliness and little villages are spread over the whole country. It doesn’t matter if you get lost somewhere
in the countryside as a foreigner. Every farmer could help you. I remember when we got stuck with our car at winter time. It was s slippery that I needed to walk to the farmer and ask for help. Oh wow, we have been somewhere in nowhere and his English was just excellent. How could it be that communication isn’t a problem at all? People up in the north start in a young age to learn English.
Furthermore, kids are exposed to a lot of international content. YouTube and Netflix made English speaking shows even more possible. When you want to watch TV in Norway the chances stay really high that you hear an English speaking TV channel. You will find the Norwegian subtitles underneath. Somebody told me that for loads of movies are no Norwegian
synchronizations. People are kind of forced to watch movies with subtitles and automatically improve their skills.

Another point is that the salaries in Norway compared to other countries are pretty high. Norwegian citizens are great travelers and love to explore and go on vacation more than just
once a year. It doesn’t matter sometimes they go far away, but also sometimes just over the weekends for a trip to London. During my stay I also checked some flights to New York from Bergen. I was surprised how cheap the flights were from there. So does the cheap accessibility to other countries also influence their skills? For sure!
But not just in English it was easy to communicate. Also, my German skills made it possible to understand the content of a conversation. I had friends from different countries on the planet. The Canadian girl I was living with helped me a lot to improve my English. Everyday conversations and trips helped to improve.
But the conversations with my friends from Norway and Denmark was always fun in a different way. Sometimes it happened that we didn’t know the word in English. I said it in German and they said it in Danish and Norwegian. In many cases we directly knew what we wanted to say. It was fun and we compared for many times words with the same meaning from our languages. Unfortunately, my time in Norway was because of the COVID 19 really short. But two of the only words I learned stayed in my mind. „Hyggelig“ which has different meanings.
Also „koselig“ is a feeling: that of cosiness, intimacy, warmth, happiness. If you read or hear „koselig“ as a German speaking person you definitely know what is meant. Not just the similarity between the Scandinavian and German languages was great.
Over time I learned how you know where an English speaking person is from. It was so funny. Especially with my Danish friend. I have to say a danish person speaking English is the best I ever heard. It is just a great accent and adds a lot of personality. Norwegians speak such a perfect accent that it is hard to say where they are from.
Different nationalities and languages are just inspiring.

Barbara Ruech, SS20