Aleksander Plucinski and Aleksandra Plucinska moved from Poland to Oslo in March 2008 when they joined Inocean's team of engineers. A Norwegian course was one of the first items on the agenda. They thought that since they had decided to live in Norway, they should learn the language as well as the culture. 

"The first course wasn't such a success," says Aleksandra. "It came too early for us. Since we'd never encountered the language before, we had no way of distinguishing separate words. Polish has so little in common with Norwegian. So initially we didn't pick up much."

Drawers stuffed with plastic bags

The Polish couple recall feeling almost like children the first few months in Norway. For a long time they had kitchen drawers stuffed with plastic bags because they could never fathom if the person at supermarket checkout was asking if they wanted bags or if they wanted the receipt.  Information from the bank or the utilities company could be enigmatic and they were dependent upon others to solve ordinary, everyday problems. Things went better at work because English is the international language of the offshore industry. Still, they felt they were missing out because much of the spontaneous dialogue between colleagues or with customers could be in Norwegian.

Now they are about to start their fifth of the nine courses (300 hours in total) in a Norwegian language programme. Two evenings a week they attend a three-hour course in a classroom of eight. They're currently working on adjectives - superlative, positive and comparative forms. 

Complicated

"It's tiring to sit down with homework after a long day at work. But we see that we're getting results," says Aleksander. "We still think the Norwegian language is complicated. For instance you pronounce all the letters in your words. So we argue with each other about how a word should be pronounced and who's correct about the conjugation of various verbs. The verdict falls when we ask a colleague or the teacher at school. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes Aleksandra's right. I guess we're at about the same level, theoretically," he says.  

Dialect problems

And then Aleksandra continues: "We have a problem with dialects. In Poland there are three and they are very similar. But you have so many in Norway, and they aren't alike! She knows what she's talking about after several trips in Norway, among them to the West Coast - Geirangerfjord and the Jotunheimen Mountains included. They also have colleagues who speak with a uvular "r"... or worse. 

Language no longer a drawback

Aleksander and Aleksandra say that their motivation to learn Norwegian increased when the financial crisis hit the shipping and offshore industries.  A crisis is possibly the best time to strengthen ones skills and competence, and they figured that a solid linguistic platform would be a strong point, whatever what was in store for them.

When Aleksander and Aleksandra came to Norway, Inocean had to take care of practical issues like hiring and administration of a flat, payment of bills and so on. Today the language is no longer much of a drawback, whether at work or elsewhere.

"We aren't reliant on others anymore," says Aleksandra.   "Our relationship with Inocean is the same as for our Norwegian colleagues. That's a nice feeling."

Aleksandra is currently working on a project to upgrade the rig Eirik Raude, while Aleksander is dealing with the FPSO BW Pioneer. Their next destination in Norway is Lofoten. There they will encounter some North Norwegian expressions they won't find in the dictionary.