Does anyone have any tips about learning a new language?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

18. Try this: If you have a Netflix account,

watch German movies and TV shows - and if the option is available (it is for some shows), turn off subtitles and instead turn on closed captions, which, of course, will be in German. That way you can read what's being said and you won't get lost because they are speaking too fast for you to understand easily. But if the particular movie doesn't have that option you can still get a lot out of watching with subtitles because it will help you with your pronunciation and some vocabulary.

I have been studying Norwegian for a couple of years and I've found TV shows and movies to be very helpful, especially for correct pronunciation. I studied German in high school and college, but in school you have regular assignments, language lab drills, tests and grades, so under those circumstances learning a language comes a lot faster. But if you are doing it on your own or in a once-a-week class, the learning is a lot slower and you have to figure out other ways to do it efficiently. Finding a source where you can listen to the language is really helpful, which is why I like going to a class. We are reading a book in the class and we are slogging through it, slowly but surely. The instructor makes us read out loud and corrects our pronunciation (you will need to find ways to be sure your pronunciation is correct if you are not in a class - Duolingo is useful for that). Norwegian looks like it should be pronounced like German but it isn't - it's very different (and the grammar is much simpler), so having learned German just added another layer of confusion for me.

The way I memorized the German dative prepositions is by singing them to "The Blue Danube": Aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu. That's the only helpful hint I can remember. Fortunately for me, Norwegian does not have dative prepositions. It doesn't even have a dative case.