It's kind of funny (with me being German), but I think the main tourist import is coming from Germany. The biggest tourist attraction is nature - Norway's west coast and the northern parts attract lots of people.
There are probably hidden gems that I don't know about ;).
Norwegians are pretty flexible with language, being a small country movies etc come with subtitles, so more or less everyone is fluent in English. In addition everybody understands Swedish, many Danish and German as well.
I'm a little ashamed that in my super-short Scandinavian adventure I didn't manage to learn any Norwegian other than what is more than a little similar to the Danish/Swedish that I had already picked up. I usually try to learn at least my "hello/goodbye/please/thank you/sorry I bumped into you" when visiting a country. But I sat on the train to Oslo with a lovely little old lady who spoke flawless English to me all the way from Stockholm.
I am always impressed in train stations everywhere but in the UK where the cashiers can flick from one language to the next without even blinking. Stood in the queue to buy tickets in Copenhagen I heard at least four languages, and felt silly after managing to garble some Danish when the cashier just replied to me in English. In England the cashiers have to ask you to repeat yourself three times if you're just from the other end of England.
My country sucks at educating languages, but I have to take a little of that blame on myself for not seeking them out.
The god (or bad, depends on your angle) thing is that the words you mention are very similar in the languages - Danish and Norwegian are very close when written, but sound very different, Swedish sounds close to Norwegian but writes completely different.
And yes, Norwegians love practicing their English. I have a Spanish colleague and she has problems speaking Norwegian, but I hear other colleagues talk to her in English all the time.
I think the problem with educating foreign languages is that school alone isn't enough. I had 8 years English in school, but got first comfortable after I moved to Norway and a) practiced more and b) started hearing it every day watching TV.
Now I work all my languages in my head everyday: Norwegian at work and whenever I meet people, German at home with hubby and the kids (we're very strict with that) and English in my head (where my fanfic lives, lol).
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There are probably hidden gems that I don't know about ;).
Norwegians are pretty flexible with language, being a small country movies etc come with subtitles, so more or less everyone is fluent in English. In addition everybody understands Swedish, many Danish and German as well.
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I am always impressed in train stations everywhere but in the UK where the cashiers can flick from one language to the next without even blinking. Stood in the queue to buy tickets in Copenhagen I heard at least four languages, and felt silly after managing to garble some Danish when the cashier just replied to me in English. In England the cashiers have to ask you to repeat yourself three times if you're just from the other end of England.
My country sucks at educating languages, but I have to take a little of that blame on myself for not seeking them out.
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And yes, Norwegians love practicing their English. I have a Spanish colleague and she has problems speaking Norwegian, but I hear other colleagues talk to her in English all the time.
I think the problem with educating foreign languages is that school alone isn't enough. I had 8 years English in school, but got first comfortable after I moved to Norway and a) practiced more and b) started hearing it every day watching TV.
Now I work all my languages in my head everyday: Norwegian at work and whenever I meet people, German at home with hubby and the kids (we're very strict with that) and English in my head (where my fanfic lives, lol).
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