My New Norwegian Home

Yesterday, Arild and I went to a friend's house who has two small children. I just love listening to them speak! I can actually understand more of what they have to say than adults. I'm assuming because children probably emphasize more on syllables. What impressed me most was these two children ages 5 and 3 knew a little English! They could count to 12 in English and the 5 year old knew colors in English. Arild's friend, her dad, would name a color, rosa for example and he would ask her, "Hva er rosa på engelsk?" (What is pink in English?). She'd reply back with "PINK!". They did this with about 5 colors and she knew the English words to them. It was very impressive to watch! I was later informed that on the show Dora the Explorer in Norway even though there are Norwegian voice overs, one of Dora's friends speaks only English so it helps the children learn English. I know in America Dora helps kids with Spanish and I'm not sure if she als...

Watching TV earlier, I noticed some movies are given different titles translated into Norwegian. I believe the movie being advertised on TV was Couples Retreat, but being translated into something different it was something like Trøbbel i paradiset. Translated it would be Trouble in the Paradise - you can see the similarities in the language in that title. All original English speaking movies are still spoken in English with no voice overs, but they are shown in Norwegian subtitles. There is an exception to this with children's movies and TV programs which do have Norwegian voice overs. I asked Arild why some movie titles are in English, some are translated, and some are translated into names completely different. He said he really didn't know and thought of a coffee table book he has which has a list of the most off-titled movie translations. He pulled out Typisk Norsk from under the coffee table and started reading these to me: I'll do the correct English title, t...