Shopping Day

Today was a shopping day. I went in to Odda in the early afternoon, brought my computer along. I returned some books to the library (2 of the 3 language courses) and did a few other things - bought some more minutes for my cell phone on the pay as you go plan. I discovered that all the language courses teach the same dialect of Norwegian, which happens to be the dialect around Oslo. So if I listen to the CDs that come along with the books, I sound very different than the people around here. But at least the language is written the same in both places, so I can learn vocab through the books.
I spent some time at the Filadelfia on their internet, checking email and trying to make contact with people to plan out some concerts for the later summer, early fall. Somewhat unfruitful, but maybe that's what happens when you leave the country for a few months.
I then went to meet with Knut Dale to study some more Norwegian. He was very helpful with the short wordlist I had compiled, and was able to give insight on some things I had noticed: the word 'lære' means both 'teach' and 'learn', depending on the context - also the dialect here differs from Oslo with a lot of the common question words, saying 'kå' instead of 'hva' (means 'what'). He also really helped me with pronunciation of Nynorsk as we read from Proverbs. I tend to have trouble with the 'u' and 'o' sounds, with making the vowel sounds right in multi-syllabic words (I want to keep the same mouth shape and just move my tongue), and also with putting emphasis on the wrong syllable (emphasizing the first syllable is generally the rule in Norwegian). To name a few issues.