Language barrier
 

Hi Im travelling to Norway next year, i was just wondering if anyone could help me with something, being australian i speak english obviously and dont know very much norwegian, ( i have started learning though) basically what im asking is, is english a very popular language in norway as im a little worried i wont be able to communicate with people, thanks

No prob. Norwegians are like the Flemish they realize nobody speak their bloody language and thus learn to speak English.
Problem is more with people from a bigger nation like the French who have a real international language and therefore were slow learning English.
But they do now.
Maybe sometimes Americans will start like you to learn foreign languages !

Just kidding about Us citizens learning foreign languages.
Will never happen.
You don't need to learn a foreign language when you build walls to keep foreigners at bay.
And the U.S. Ones who do speak foreign languages voted for somebody civilized !

Norwegians speak excellent English. If you can learn a few words it is nice, but you don't have to worry about it. Tak is the best word to learn.

You will find little places out in the boon-docks where English is not spoken everywhere or indeed very well.

We were in a hotel in Bergen, and spoke to the young woman clearing our table. We complimented her on her excellent English, and she explained that she wasn't Norweigan, but Polish. Presumably, she spoke all three languages.

Why is the Norwegian word for roof the best to learn? English is so widespread that people from Poland get by on English and Polish - relatively few learn Norwegian. You often find that hotel and restaurant staff don't speak Norwegian and you have to use English anyway.

Dyoll, for some reason the second k didn't appear in my message. Probably my typing I admit, but I hadn't realised it wasn't there.

You may be shocked (or maybe not) that throughout the world, English has become the 2nd language most everywhere. Go to a museum, you will find explanations in local language and English. I was shocked visiting Warsaw a few years ago that the museums had explanations in Polish and English (you would have thought given history it would be Russian). I was shocked a year or two ago visiting St. Petersburg in Russia and riding on the subway to find all the signs in both Russian and in English. Almost everywhere, English is considered the language of first choice for students to begin learning in second or third grade. It's simply the way it is.

WoinParis: There's a reason why Americans don't speak foreign languages. We're so darned far from anywhere a foreign language is spoken.

My city, Spokane, Washington, is 1300 miles from Mexico. It's 2000 miles from Spokane to Montreal.

I doubt very much that many Europeans would speak foreign languages is they weren't so close to each other.

By the way, I speak German and Spanish, though neither as well as I'd like, since I have learned both as an adult and seldom have opportunity to use them.

I had coffee on Saturday with an American girl who speaks very good German and Italian, has picked up French along the way, and is now taking Arabic.

She speaks German and Italian because her parents are both teachers in U.S. military dependents' schools, so she's lived in Germany and Italy for long periods of time.

Of course peg.
I realize I was more disagreeable than intended.
There are two reasons to not learn a language : when you don't need it and when everybody speaks your language.
I am as lazy as any and if I learnt Dutch it is because half of my country speaks it.
Then I realized it is a language spoken by a handful of people and learnt English.
I told my children to focus on English first and to do the necessary in Dutch.
Now both are learning Spanish.
I would never learn anymore another language spoken by a dwarf country like Norway or Belgium ...
However it does increase open mindedness to learn foreign languages. As it does for you. For me it is another matter it just gives me the opportunity to be rude with more people !

We were in Norway just over a year ago. We were in tourist areas though as we did the Norway in a Nutshell, so basically went from Oslo to Bergen and we had no language issues at all. We did learn to say thank you, but that was it.