Talking Proper

One of the biggest hits to my ego when we are in Norway is when I speak Norwegian to a stranger and they respond back in English.  Like, how do they know?  I always wonder what the dead give away is that I’m not fluent in their language.  

Thirty years ago I backpacked around Europe by myself and I was always shocked when strangers approached me and started speaking English before I’d even spoken a word, or they’d just flat out ask me if I were an American.  I could never understand how they knew - until someone pointed out that I wore tennis shoes.  Europeans, at that time, only wore tennis shoes on the tennis court, and only Americans would “dress down” that much in public.  

Since that dress code is no longer the case, I’m perplexed when my Americanism is discovered prematurely in Norway. My accent, improper grammar, and/or sentence structure must all be dead giveaways, I guess.

When I ask a stranger something and I actually do get a response in Norwegian, I feel triumphant that I passed the “they understood my Norwegian perfectly” test.   I’m also thrilled when I understand their Norwegian response, since I often don’t, but it never keeps me from giving it the old college try.

Norwegians are very encouraging when it comes to people trying to speak their language so I’m never embarrassed about speaking it.  They, on the other hand, won’t speak a word of English if they don’t feel they can say it perfectly.  I guess their standards are just a little higher than mine.

My son, Kaleb, was in the 4^th grade the year we lived in Norway.  He came home a bit upset one day when he told me when it was his turn to read Norwegian out loud in class, all the kids laughed at him.  Apparently he didn’t have all his pronunciation down properly.  But then he reported, with a glimmer in his eye, that his teacher had devised a “fix” for that. 

His teacher suggested Kaleb bring one of his favorite English books to school the next day and the first kid that laughs at him for the way he pronounces his Norwegian words will have to read that book out loud in English so Kaleb can then laugh at them.  There was one kid that knew English so well that the teacher said she would bring a book written in Chinese just for him. That put an end to Kaleb getting laughed at for the way he spoke Norwegian.

I have to admit, it sounds pretty funny to hear Norwegian kids speaking English using improper verb tenses or the wrong sentence structure – mistakes I make all the time.  I’m just glad I’m not shamed into silence, though, as I often catch myself giggling when I hear things like, “Now go we” or “Where is you?”