Asking people in Sweden if they speak English is almost a formality. Almost everyone will say something modest (a very Swedish trait), like, "Oh, my English isn't that good!" Then they'll begin speaking to you in almost flawless English.
Inspite of this, I'd really like to be speaking Swedish as soon as possible. My goal is to be functional in Swedish by the sometime in the fall. By "functional", I mean being able to maintain my end of a conversation, or being able to pick up a newspaper and read it without problems. I'm not starting from scratch; I've heard a lot of Swedish spoken over the past dozen years, and I've even taken a couple classes. Still, it will be a bit of a challenge, which is part of what makes it exciting to me.
I have a few things working in my favor, the most obvious being the fact that I'm living in Sweden with Swedish people. To take advantage of this, we're instituting "Swedish only" time from breakfast through dinner. During this time I'll attempt to minimize my exposure to English (including blogging) and try to force myself to not just listen but also speak as much as possible. That's the really hard part. I'll let you all know how this goes...
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Phonetic spelling is fun:
ReplyDeletePraataar due sven-ska?
("aa" pronounced as the initial "a" in "Amish")
("ska" is pronounced as in the musik "ska")
This means "Speak you Swedish?"
Good to have you in Swedish (oops, Sweden ;).
Or "Talar" as you wrote of course.
ReplyDeleteI like the name of the blog. Nerdy and all.
Something that really helped me get started reading seriously was lättläst böcker. They are easy to read as a relative beginner, but the stories are actually interesting to adults: http://www.lattlast.se
ReplyDelete--Kevin
Tack, Martin! It's funny how hard it is for an english speaker to understand the long and short 'a', even though almost exactly the same sounds exist in English.
ReplyDeleteKevin, that looks perfect! I was just at a bookstore a couple days ago lamenting the fact that the only things I might be able to read where written for kids.
Update a couple years later: I wasn't that good by the first fall, but I was reading newspapers pretty quickly, and can get by pretty well in Swedish now (although I still fall back on English most of the time with people I know).
ReplyDeleteAlso, Kevin lives in Stockholm now and we're good friends!