Swedish -The Language

Its been almost 2 years, time has flown by.

Anyone that has been here for this amount of time on meeting another Swede is invariably asked the cliché question: 'How is your Swedish?'.

Well my answer to that at the point of writing this post is that I have actually picked it up quite well, with the ability to convey what I want to say and to understand most of the conversations going on around me. Im not fluent, not sure if I ever will be but I do make a daily effort to practice and memorize more words. My grammer needs work and basically i just convert what i want to say in english into Swedish directly, which actually doesnt work all the time. Its hard to compare my Swedish level to a Swedes level of english considering they have been learning it in School since grade 4 and are continually bombarded with english programming and advertising everywhere they go.

I think the main problem for me is that its hard to pick up the various dialects that exist in the country. Right now im in the southern part of Sweden: Skåne (pronounced SKOOONE) and they speak much more like the Danish down here. Living in Stockholm first for 18 months helped me pick up a purer and easier to understand form of Swedish.

Also of concern is the oral, I have to really concentrate on what people are saying and i find myself say Vad säger du (what did you say) quite often. Also its difficult to learn Swedish in Sweden becuase everyone speaks such good english and as soon as you stumble people switch over.

One of the best ways i have found to practice my oral and vocabulary is listening to Swedish Schalgar Music, very fun and normally the tunes are quite bubblegum pop and catchy.

One thing for sure however is that daily interactions here are made much easier if you have a base of Swedish.

The Swedish Word of the day is: BRYR SIG OM and it means to CARE ABOUT ONESELF.