EDIT:

Go to /r/totalanguage, they have the rules and such there, and much better explained then me.

6 months guys!

Minn norsk er passe bra. Jeg trenger aa lese mye naa. Med en kveld de Svenska snakker, "Headphone_Actress picked up a Norwegian accent!"

Estre, I should show you the progress soon.

Vi sees!

In March I've probably done even less Norwegian than the other months. I have been kept busy for 13+ daily hours at university or doing university-related things, leaving little time for sleep and even less for Norwegian. Not to mention when one is so tired all the time, the last thing you're going to do is open up a grammar book or something like that.

I continue to keep plants alive on memrise, have occasional chats on skype, and have been working my way through Harry Potter og de vises stein (the first book). I received a second-hand copy from a friend and have been really enjoying having an actual book in Norwegian. I have also acquired more books actually, so I'll be having read¡ng material for a while, especially at this glacial pace.

I've been actually dedicating some time to Swedish and a very, very small amount to Icelandic too. Though this occasionally messes with my head when identical words are used differently (for example artig and rolig for Swedish and Norwegian, meaning polite/fun; fun, funny/quiet), I do feel like this gives a small advantage when exposed to different Norwegian dialects as some of them are closer to Swedish than others and I do mean to expose myself to other dialects once the uni things let up a little (soon), as well as maybe expose myself to nynorsk some more though I already do some.

I do feel some small improvements in my speed when writing in Norwegian and overall how correct what I write is, I've started writing a bit more on /r/norge where the rules state that one has to write in Norwegian and just in general trying to write more despite my shyness. I hate making mistakes, but I need to get over it. It's gone actually really well.

The skype group has also gotten a bit bigger, so that'll hopefully also mean more activity there, since it's been rather quiet lately compared to when we began it.

I feel like I might not really get fluency this year, at least not spoken one since I'm not getting any such practice, but I'll probably get really, really close for written Norwegian. I've already been told by a few people that my Norwegian is really, really good. In my opinion it's not good enough but I can communicate most anything I want and that's a great place to be, while I work on working out some of the smaller details that I still struggle a little with (pronounciation, prepositions, and I need to also improve my vocabulary).

I wish this subreddit got activity, you guys should post logs too. It would be very motivating and interesting to read. Stå på!

I found the time in between History Day and Geometry, (10 weeks left, then free time in the computer lab!) To do learning.

Thanks to the Skype Group, ((Shout-out to my Norwegian homies!)) I've learned Vocab, Grammar, and made friends.

Now I'm just focusing on Verbs, From:

Aa bite: To bite

Aa blande: To blend

Aa doe: To die

Aa lese: To read

Aa leve: To live:

Aa laere: To learn.

Jeg laere norsk, ogsaa jeg har venne!

Hi there!

Posting here just for my own records, since I suspect nobody is reading (Hi, Headphone_Actress... maybe you are too).

This past month I have been studying less Norwegian but I've continued to put it into use. I suspect I am at the point where I don't need all that much actual studying, I just need to use it and work out any mistakes.

I have a few grammatical doubts and stuff like that which I just ask my friends about whenever I think of it. It's quite relaxed, but I'm still learning, I like that.

I just obtained some books so I'll be reading more in the language and that'll hopefully help me to pick up some more vocabulary and naturality in use. One thing I am really pleased with, however, is how easy it is to understand what people are saying whenever I read in Norwegian. A year back I was using google translate a lot, now I have gained a lot more knowledge and confidence, I am even able to correct other people sometimes, or at least realize when something is off.

I've memrised and Lang-8'd quite a bit less, but still keeping those plants watered for the most part. I tend to have around 200 wilting plants which I manage to get down to zero maybe every two weeks, then subsequently have three days off and get back to where I started, it's a bit frustrating. I have ignored a lot of words that I know for sure though, so hopefully it'll get a little easier to stay on top of it all.

School is keeping me very busy though, so I imagine I'll be doing less Norwegian from this point on. Still trying to keep on chatting and such so I won't lose it.

Other than that, I've started brushing up on my French which had long been neglected, I've also improved my Swedish (which I am worse at than Norwegian) and I've learned a few words of Icelandic.

Stå på! Vi snakkes!

Norwegian

I'm still alive here. I'm learning a lot of verbs, and Skype is helping me with my grammar. ((Thanks Guys!))

I haven't posted often because I'm making a video diary, to hear my pronunciation and where I have trouble. It's been fun though!

My progress in Norwegian this month has been a bit off and on.

I've only written 6 entries at Lang-8, far cry from the 15 I made in December. I do notice fewer corrections need to be made, though, and that's good.

I've been speaking on skype with other Norwegian learners and a few Norwegians. I wonder at times if this could be a bit harmful, since I am exposed to a lot of bad grammar / misspellings from the other learners, and I wouldn't want to end up picking up bad habits. But at the same time, it's good to read what someone else has written with a bit of a critical eye to and trying to spot mistakes. So I guess it's a bit of a double-edged sword, that I can perhaps counter just by talking to a lot of Norwegians too.

This month I've been exposed to more nynorsk. Had a two hour conversation in which I was writing bokmål and she was writing nynorsk. I've definitely been able to follow along very well, which I'm pleased with. I think it's important with this language to be aware of all the different variations that can happen, since everyone has their own dialect, and the more flexible I keep my brain in this sense, the easier time I'll have understanding different people.

Twice on memrise my amount of wilting plants got out of hand, and twice I've managed to get it back under control. I've also been adding words to course number 4, hoping to get that finished and ready for everyone to use by the end of February, although I'm not sure that many people are actually using them. Now that my grammar has improved a lot, it's time to expand my vocabulary a little more, and gain some confidence.

I really need to find someone to speak to though, and get over the shyness of speaking Norwegian out loud. I'm a little wary of doing it because I'm sure to mispronounce many words, but I really should just do it.

As for listening, I haven't really listened to any audiobooks this month, but I acquired the text for Hobbiten, so I plan to listen to that one again. I also watched a couple movies with Norwegian dubs. Kung Fu Panda was extremely entertaining and I surprised myself by managing to follow along with the dialogue just fine.

Another notable change this month is that I've stopped "warning" people that I'm not Norwegian. I see no point in mentioning it anymore unless asked. I'm getting more confident in my communication abilities, so I just interact normally. I've been playing Draw Something in Norwegian, and I emailed customer support for a website about an issue, back and forth a few times, with no problems. I guess not feeling the need to mention it anymore means that I'm more sure of myself that what I'm saying is correct.

Next month should be a little lighter class-wise, so I'll try to sneak in more learning than this month.

I'm hoping to read updates from you guys! It's too bad this team doesn't have much activity, we should change that!

I am late posting this, but it looks like we all are. I am going to assume first week didn't count cause it was like three days. Anyways, I haven't done much. I did a few exercises on Rosetta Stone. I will get more into it the week after this when I have access to my books again.

It's a shame that there isn't very much activity in this subreddit yet! I'd like to hear about your experiences this week, frustrations, triumphs, whatever, etc. Let's have some discussion, team!

Hi everyone! My name's Shea, and I'm incredibly excited to kick off the new year with a challenge.

I'm really focused on making this year a good language year for myself. I've been working on Icelandic for a while now, but I never really had the motivation to go much further than preschool vocabulary. I've been busy, granted, but there are way more people out there learning languages in harder conditions than I've ever been in.

Swedish, however, is new. I can't even tell you the verb for "speak". It's embarrassing, but you have to start somewhere, right? I love the language and I'm hoping that I'll be able to get a good balance between it, Icelandic, and my schoolwork.

I'll mostly be using resources I find in /r/svenska, /r/languagelearning, memrise, and my local library. Hopefully somewhere along the lines I get into a good skype/tinychat group to help pronunciation along -- Swedish and Icelandic can be especially hard with that, I've found.

But yeah, I don't have too many end goals for myself. All I can really ask is that I make good progress and keep consistent study habits. Of course I'd like to be more confident in speaking both of them, as well.

Welcome to the first discussion thread everybody. I guess these will kind of act as roll calls every week to see who is still in. The main purpose though is for everybody to get together and share tips and get advice or just discuss the language learning process you are going through.

As for me, I have not actually started yet :P I am going to resume Rosetta Stone soon, but I will not have acess to my books until I am back at school in few weeks.

I'm RainingNothing and chose to learn Swedish for this challenge. For the last couple years, I've been dreaming of one day going to Sweden. Now that I'm on my way to college, I hope to be able to participate in an exchange program in the future. And the language itself sounds really pretty compared to others I know.

I'm not sure of how much time I'll have for this challenge due to school, projects, and other stuff. But I hope that by the end of this year, I'll be able to read a news article without a lot problems.

I kind of started learning it about a year ago using Rosetta Stone. It was actually helpful in getting the most basic things in my head but I felt that it was too slow and my focus drifted away mostly because of school work.

I have found a lot of useful resources that I will be using for this challenge. Among them are:

• Essentials of Swedish Grammar: A Practical Guide to the Mastery of Swedish by Ake Viberg, Kerstin Ballardini and Sune Stjarnlof
• Swedish: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars) by Ian Hinchliffe and Philip Holmes
• Web Course provided by Roger Nyborg, a professor at Stockholm University
• Swedish exercises and other materials
• The good old flashcards

When I had just been studying Norwegian for a couple months, a Norwegian guy I knew said he doubted that I could become fluent. Therefore I decided to prove him wrong :). My goal was to become fluent within 2 years, and it's been one year now.

I can read almost anything in Norwegian without any trouble. That's definitely my strongest point. I have done some chatting, email exchanges and writing texts in Norwegian as well so I do alright, maybe an occasional word order problem or using the wrong preposition.

My listening and speaking skills need some work though. Unfortunately I don't know any Norwegians offline whom I can speak to, but I'll figure out some way to practice that this year.

I don't use any textbooks, so I'll just continue to do what I've been doing so far and has worked quite well: read in Norwegian, ask questions to Norwegian people, listen to audiobooks, watch movies with Norwegian dubs or Norwegian subtitles, write texts at Lang-8 and memrise a lot of vocabulary.

My goal is to end up speaking fluently, hopefully with minimal errors and without looking up any words. Sometimes I look up words that I do know just to make sure I am spelling them correctly, I'd like to gain the confidence to not need to do that. I'd like to be able to have a normal conversation with a Norwegian person without him/her feeling like they have to switch back to English, possibly even forgetting for a little bit that I'm not a native speaker.

I feel like I'll be doing the same sort of thing every week, so I'll just post monthly logs rather than weekly.

Coming from /r/norsk.

I have just begun a skype group for Norwegian learners where we can help one another with the language and chat in Norwegian (English is of course also acceptable if you don't feel comfortable enough with Norwegian yet).

It would be great if more people joined. Message me with your skype username if you'd like to become a part of it and I will add you as soon as possible.

Hi, I'm Naryn! The first thing I want to cover is what exactly I'm going to be doing over the next year. I've found a set of nine lessons on Old Norse; I'm going to go through those at a rate of one or two a week to get some fundamental knowledge about the language. There is another set of readings here that I'm tempted to space out as well.

The next thing I'm going to do is to acquire one of the following books: either A New Introduction to Old Norse, by Michael Barnes or An Introduction to Old Norse, by E.V. Gordon. I'm open to suggestions on which text is preferable, but I might choose to tackle both of them in succession.

After that, I'm planning to start trying to translate a copy of my favorite Icelandic saga, Egil's Saga, which ought to take me at least a couple months.

That's as far as I've got planned; I'll be working off of this online dictionary online dictionary, as well as this one.

Now, with that out of the way, how far have I gotten already, and what am I going to do this week? Well, I completed the first two lessons of the Old Norse For Beginners series about a month ago; I'm hoping to be able to review those this week, and maybe work on my vocabulary with some flashcards taken from the dictionaries linked above. I'm planning on reviewing flashcards in between sets at the gym, which gives me a dedicated 12 to 36 minute margin of review every day. I'll also be working on composing sentences with the vocabulary I know, which I might update this topic with if anyone's interested.

And there you have it! I hope you have a good week working on this, and I'll see you in a little while! :)

I'm zero_degree and I'm learning Swedish from scratch. In July, I think, I started the first 8 lessons on www.sprichmalschwedisch.com and then I stopped. My main language is Italian because I'm A2 and therefore I probably wont study as much as I want to but at least I'm getting used to the sound so I'll be able to speak like a swede (hopefully ;) ).

In the beginning I'll use only the homepage, it has about 25 lessons for absolute beginners.

My goals are to be fluent eventually because I want to read books (Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, John Ajvide Lindqvist,...) watch films and hopefully travel there.

I am FeralFantom and I am learning Swedish this year. I have already studied it a little bit. I have been using Rosetta Stone v3 and some books from my college library. I am on Level 1, Unit 3, Lesson 2 of Swedish on Rosetta Stone.

The books I am using are:

• Swedish : a comprehensive grammar by Philip Holmes and Ian Hinchliffe.
• Colloquial Swedish : the complete course for beginners by Jennie Ahlgren, Philip Holmes and Gunilla

I may use more resources if I feel I need them or find really good ones during the course of the year.

I am learning Swedish because I have Swedish ancestry and I would like to become more involved in my ancestry. I also wish to possibly live in Sweden some day.

My goals are to become able to on some level consume Swedish media, perhaps newspapers or movies. Comprehending Swedish black metal and crust punk unlikely even with complete understanding of Swedish language.

EDIT: Thought I would give more in-depth description of my current knowledge. I know a few basic verbs: eat sleep, study, play, work, drink, smell, taste, walk, run, cook, swim. I also know plenty of basic nouns. I know a bit of grammar, like the two cases, I only know one tense. I know how to pluralize and some basic structural words like and, with, not, possession, pronouns, and some question words like what and where.

Hello, I'm Mike; And instead of learning an easy, Germanic language like Norwegian or Swedish, I'm studying Finnish.

Why would you do that to yourself? Are you a masochist?

Because:

• Finnish sounds awesome.
  Dat vowel harmony.

• Finnish has 15 noun cases, which are very regular with few exceptions. This turns most people off from a language. This turns me on to one.

• I think Finland is an awesome country. I also like cold weather.

Ok... but how? How are you learning Finnish?

I'll be using a lot of different books and lessons, but the most relevant resources I'll be using are the following:

• Memrise and Anki for vocabulary

• Sanakirja as my dictionary

• Fred Karlsson's Finnish: An Essential Grammar

What will you be doing this week?

I'll be reading my way through Essential Grammar this week, and start on this course of the 2000 most common words in Finnish with Memrise, doing 20-25 new words a day.

What are your end-year goals?

• Be able to read a simple news story in Finnish

• Find a native speaker IRL to assist me, and practice with

How do you say "Happy new year" in Finnish?

Onnellista uutta vuotta!

Hey everyone. I thought it would be a good idea for everyone to introduce themselves and which language they will be learning. I plan on either learning Swedish or Norwegian, but haven't decided yet. I'll probably choose the one that I can find the best sources for.

So who is our team leader? Also, how will be be doing logs reporting in? And it would be nice to see who is actually doing the challenge and for which languages. Maybe reply under a certain language to indicate which you are doing? I checked out the Portuguese team and they have some flags up and the people in the sidebar and I think it'd be nice to have that. Also, do we want to have a midway point or something where we start writing our logs in our target language? Also, flair?

TL; DR: Say something about yourself. I'm 23, I'm French and I want to learn Icelandic because it hasn't much elvolved since the 13th century.

Góðan daginn! Hvernig gengur? I thought it'd be nice to get to know each other. Post whatever you want here - a little bit about yourself, why you choose that language, and your level of fluency, maybe?

I'm WFW and I'm a 23 year-old, female Frenchie. My interest in Icelandic comes from my interest in medieval re-enactment and my fascination from the Scandinavian ethnics. Nobody had it easy during the Middle Ages, but they did survive surrounded by warring neighbours and in an extremely hostile environment. They also gave us a legacy of tales and folklore that fed my imagination. As I believe that the direct way to a culture's soul is through its languages, and as Icelandic is one of the most unchanged European languages, well, I decided to learn Icelandic. It has proven much more difficult than what I thought, especially to find native speakers and learning resources (I learn on my own), but it's going to be okay, at some point.

... I'm sorry, this is much longer than expected. :3

I know we are a few days away from the launch date, but what will Team Viking be doing to get after it? I am personally going to be rocking a combo of a Swedish course book I got and listening to copious amounts of Swedish talk radio.

Introduce yourselves here. You can give whatever information you want: Name, languages known, language you are learning, location, etc. You can give your current knowledge of your language and your plans if you wish, or you can save it for your start post tomorrow. This is also to help see who is actually participating in the TC on Team Viking so we can have a list. As people post here or post their starts I will add them to this list.

We can also elect leader if you wish. I made this subreddit, but it doesn't have to be me. If no one else wants to do it I will just continue to do what I'm doing.

EDIT: After fixing the removed posts, I realize there is another introduction thread. Since it was first, feel free to post in that one for your introductions, but a roll call stating you are in this team would be nice in here.

Team Viking Members:

• FeralFantom - Swedish
• Headphone_Actress - Norwegian
• thomashc - Norwegian, Icelandic, Old Norse, Old English, Swedish
• wanderer92 - Swedish
• Naryn_Tin-Ahhe - Old Norse
• zero_degree - Swedish
• gtarget - Norwegian
• miekstro_v2 - Finnish
• Estre - Norwegian
• Phorofor_ - Swedish
• WFW - Icelandic
• theninjahamster7 - Swedish, Finnish
• RainingNothing - Swedish

Post in the comments any resources for Nordic and Finnic languages you know of. I will try to add them into this main post as soon as I can.

General:

• Memrise

Swedish:

• /r/Svenska
• /r/Sweden
• Rosetta Stone v3, v4
• Dagens Nyheter - Swedish Newspaper
• Sveriges Radio - Swedish Radio
• Simple Swedish Youtube Series - Not very in-depth at all but very entertaining
• The People's Dictionary - Online Swedish<->English Dictionary
• Introduction to Swedish course
• Online Swedish Course
• Speak Swedish!
• Sprich Mal Schwedisch - In German

Norwegian:

• /r/Norsk
• /r/Norway

Danish:

• Rosetta Stone v2

Finnish:

• Sanakirja Online Dictionary
• Uusi Kielemme - Finnish for busy people
• /r/suomi, /r/finland

I hope the text below helps clarifying the rules for TAC 2013. There are some small differences from the rules posted in /r/totalanguage.

The logs must be text threads posted on /r/Team_Viking, with the title following the pattern below:

2013, Week [#] - [User name] - [Log title]

Example of a log title for the seventh week of studying:

2013, Week 7 - Vitamini - Here you write anything you think that would fit as a title

On January 1st, the members should create their fist log describing their study plans and objectives in their target language. This log should be "numbered" Start, and not Week 1! As such, here's an example of title for the first log:

2013, Start - Vitamini - Here you write anything you think that would fit as a title

Every Sunday, every team member should post a log of his past study week and any plans for the week that's starting. Each log should refer primarily to the past week, containing at least an overview of what and how did the member studied through the week, such as materials used, time studied, progress, goals, methods etc. Members can also write about the plans for the next week. Monthly detailed logs are also acceptable - but in this case, try to make it as complete as possible, and write the month name instead of the week in the title.

The team leaders will post a official discussion thread every Friday so we can discuss various topics regarding anything related to the learning process.

Important: Late joiners should make their "Start" thread on the first day they start studying, and post their weekly logs on Sundays the same way as early joiners, but remember to start numbering your study weeks from "Week 1" rather than following the numbering of who has already been studying for more time. (paragraph added in 2012/12/31)

Weeks are numbered from the first week you started taking the challenge, rather than weeks of study. Thus, the first week of the year will be shorter than the others. (paragraph added in 2012/12/31)

Try to post the logs in the correct days. Don't make it a chore, though - If it's inconvenient to turn in your logs at the proposed day, feel free to set another day, but try your best not to post in irregular intervals!

Please, post only one log a week. If you feel you should add more information, please do so in the log for the current week.

Feel free to create discussion and question threads at any day. Remember you can also ask /r/Svenska, /r/norsk or the other language subreddits (if you know of them, tell me in a comment and I'll add them) if you have any questions regarding the language. Link threads however are not recommended - if you want to share a link, please do so on the message body of a text thread.

Sorry about this, it is not my doing. I am not sure what is going on, but I will try to figure it out if I can. I'm completely new to modding a subreddit. Hopefully this post doesn't disappear as well...

EDIT: I think I figured it out. I went to moderation queue and all the posts were there waiting to be approved. As you can see, they are now approved. I thought it was set up where anyone could submit but it doesn't seem to be working. So in them eantime I am adding everyone that posts here to approved submitters, hopefully that will work.