Updates on the podcast and plans for the future

I post new episodes every Monday and my plan is to keep doing so in the future. The episodes will probably remain 20 minutes long, but I am open to change the format or experiment with longer and shorter episodes. Please do feel free to contact me should you have any ideas or preferences. I do appreciate feedback.

Recently, I have been working on improving the audio quality of the episodes. At the moment, I am re-recording the old episodes so that the audio quality will be adequate so that it will be easier to understand and listen to. When I am posting this episode, I have updated episodes 23 to 34 as well as the first episode. 

I also have some other plans for the future of the podcast. Ideally, I would like to update the website so that it looks nicer and has more resources available to you. For example, I was thinking about underlining hard words and structures in the transcripts and provide translations for them in the text. One way of doing this would make it so that the translation is available when hovering over the underlined section. I would also like to add some more resources on the website such as my own grammar and syntax sections and an overview of other materials available to learn Norwegian.

Moreover, I would really like to expand this project and make a YouTube channel as well. The focus of the YouTube channel would be primarily on Norwegian grammar and syntax, and I think I would like to do it in English. This could be a useful resource to utilize with the podcast. While the podcast provides a lot of authentic Norwegian, the Youtube channel could be a place where I make short, succinct videos on how the Norwegian language works. I would like to provide materials for beginners, intermediates and more advanced learners too. If you have any suggestions, I would really like to hear them. I know that Norwegian is not the biggest language, and neither is it the language with the most resources. So it would be really useful if you could give me some feedback as to what you would like and what would make it easier to learn Norwegian.

Finally, I want to announce that I have made a Patreon site where you can support the podcast if you would like to do so. This project takes a lot of my time and I would like to keep improving it. For example by buying a new microphone and by moving the podcast to a more secure hosting service. So if you have the ability to do so, I would like to ask you to consider making a donation to the podcast. I would really appreciate it. I just want to stress that the podcast will, of course, remain free, and so will the transcripts. The patreon site is meant as a way of making it possible to support the podcast, but the podcast itself will remain free for everyone, forever. However, I would like to provide some bonus material for patrons, but more information about this will come in the future. If you should like to support the podcast, please see the link in the description of this episode. Thank you.

4 Replies to “Updates on the podcast and plans for the future”

  1. Hello Marius,

    This is your not-so-old student of Norwegian language, Nikita 🙂

    First of all, I want to say that your idea with a youtube channel is really worth it, you will probably get much more attention there than here and you also can get some people from youtube to this website. For the youtube channel, I think many language learners would benefit from you talking to different people on the street or at your university, or any other setting where it’s possible to hear how Norwegians communicate between themselves. It’s one thing to hear a podcast and read something in a book, and it’s completely another thing when two or more people speak to each other. I think this would allow language learners to better comprehend spoken Norwegian and learn some new “uttrykk” that people in Norway use in natural setting.

    And regarding your podcast, I think one feature would make it extra good. Sometimes it’s hard to follow the transcript and you speaking at the same time, especially if I try to pronounce everything as you do. This is especially true to those episodes where you not use bokmål, this “r” is really hard to pronounce, haha.
    So my suggestion is that, if it’s possible to make the sentence you are pronouncing right now highlighted, it would be much more comfortable. It’s kind of like Karaoke where the words you should vocalise now are highlighted.

    Thank you for all the hard work!

    1. Hi, Nikita!
      Thank you so muuch fo rthe feedback, this is gold! It takes a lot of time to make videos so I don’t feel like I have the time this semestre. Also, I don’t think I have found a good format yet, but you have some really good suggestions here. For now, I have tried to make a new podcast aimed at beginners called “Norsk for Beginners”. This is meant as a bridge to “Lær norsk nå!”. Also, I feel like there is not a lot of spoken material aimed at beginners, so I thought it could be useful.

      That would be an amazing feauture, but I have no idea how to do it or even if it is doable. Have you seen such a feuature another place?

      1. Yes, I’ve seen this feature on coursera, where I do my accounting courses. It’s a little bit different format than what you have here, but it is totally doable, although I am not an expert in this.
        The way it works there is as follows: you have a video that you watch and you have a transcript that was generated automatically based on voice recognition. When a lecturer speaks, his or her sentence is highlighted and it’s also possible to click on any sentence in the transcript and it will forward you to the exact place in the video where the lecturer starts to vocalise this particular phrase.
        Personally for me it was of great help there and I appreciated this feature. I am not sure if it’s possible to do the same on WordPress though, it is probably quite limited in terms of functionality.

        And one additional thought, I remember that you love history. When you have a little bit of time and feel like it, you could try make something history-related in Norwegian. It would be so interesting and useful to learn about Norwegian history in Norwegian.

        1. Interesting feauture, but unless it can be done automatically by a computer, I think it might be a bit too labour intensive.

          Yes, yes, yes! I have to do something on Norwegian history soon. Great idea 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *