I think Duolingo is very good for reviewing languages. So far I'm up to 30 days review in French, Spanish, and Polish. In the past I tried learning Norwegian and Chinese using Duolingo but it didn't work so well. I need something more.
Right now I've been using memrise to learn norwegian. So far it's working ok. I like the videos and audio. One of the words I learned today was kjøtt which means meat. Right now it sounds like "shut" to me so immediately I imagined shutting the refrigerator door on a slab of raw beef and the bloody red juices running down the inside and outside of the refrigerator.
The only thing that would make it better would be IPA for the words. Of course I can always look it up in https://en.wiktionary.org/ . The IPA for kjøtt is /çœt/ . I haven't got that far in IPA to know how to pronounce that yet.
Which leads me to learning IPA. I watched two fluent forever videos
which I need to watch again. (I found this link by searching "fluent forever ipa english youtube")
I also listened to several language mastery podcasts, one featuring Claude Cartaginese, https://l2mastery.com/blog/claude-cartaginese/ who has a free PDF about polygot language learners which is pretty interesting. I'm up to page 37 out of 534 pages. It would be nice if the library had this so I could read it on Libby. John Fotheringham and Claude had some suggestions to make learning languages in and out of class rooms better.
I'm slowly working my way in a relaxed manner through "Norwegian Tutor, Grammar and Vocabulary Book" by Elettra Carbone and Guy Puzey. I just want to get a general idea so I am just reading the rules and sample sentences.
I found a decent workbook for learning IPA but it is probably out of print, "Mastering the International Phonetic Alphabet, Guide and Workbook." by Donald M. Decker, Elbert Covell College, University of the Pacific, A Regents Publication copyright 1970.
So far up to lesson 5 out of 17, I have learned the following.
- Brackets are used to enclose IPA symbols [ ]
- Quite a few consonant symbols are pronounced the same as in English
- Some vowel pairs
- [b], [p]; Plosive, Bilabial
- [d], [t]; Plosive, Alveolar
- [f], [v]; Fricative, Labiodental
- [g] as in go, [k]; Plosive, Velar
- [m] Nasal, Bilabial,
- [n]; Nasal Alveolar
- [s] as in so [z]; Fricative, Alveolar
- [h], Fricative, glottal
- [l], Lateral approximant, Alveolar
- [r], Tap or Flap, Alveolar
- [w], Voiced labial, velar approximant (found in other symbols on IPA chart)
- [y] as in you
- [i] long e as in sleep, vs. [ɪ] short i as in give,
- [e] long a as in call vs. [ɛ] short e as in let
- [æ] short a as in had vs. [a] "ah" as in not
- [ɔ] "aw" as in law vs. [o] long o as in snow
- [ʊ] short? us as in full vs. [u] long u? as in fool