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Doviende’s Swedish Log (TAC2010 - Team J) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5985 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 9 of 65 10 December 2009 at 3:47am | IP Logged |
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No, you just need two things: 1) an understanding of what it means when someone describes a pitch as going down or going up. some people seem to not know what this means at all, so the description of it is useless for them. 2) lots and lots of listening practice.
If you've never heard any Mandarin before, then it can be very hard to say things correctly. This is what happens in a lot of school classes, because they typically don't get the students to do that much listening. They just describe it, and hope that the students will be able to do it properly. Most people find this extremely difficult, which is understandable. But if you just listen to a few dozen hours of native Mandarin speakers talking normally, then you'll start to hear what it's supposed to sound like. You'll probably find yourself saying things a certain way because "it just sounds right that way". This is what I'm hoping to accomplish with Swedish too. After 30 hours of listening at the end of next week, I'm hoping that a lot of things will "just sound right". Once you have this experience of listening to hours and hours, and getting the sounds into your head, you can do an experiment in recording yourself. Turn on an audio recorder and record yourself speaking, then play it back. If you have listening experience, then you'll be able to easily pick out the parts that sound weird. It might take more listening to figure out what's really wrong with them, but you should at least be able to hear the parts that are "different" somehow, and then you can ask a native speaker about them. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Shadow1984 Groupie United States Joined 5488 days ago 53 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 10 of 65 11 December 2009 at 8:50pm | IP Logged |
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Doviende,
I will have to definitely get an audio recorder by the time I learn Mandarin especially with it being a tonal language. I should actually be doing that now. I probably don't even know if I am pronouncing things right and that I only think I am. I have not been using audio material lately as of yet because I want to get down more vocabulary and the basic grammar. I have noticed that in many language classes there really isn't any listening the teachers just teach with themselves vocally unless there is a test or something and they play an audio recording. It does make sense that, the more you listen to something the more likely you'll be able to pick out the different tones. The different Tones is what actually the main reason that made me choose to learn Japanese before ever learning Chinese. You make it not sound as intimidating as I once thought, but I will eventually have to see for myself! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5985 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 11 of 65 14 December 2009 at 7:13pm | IP Logged |
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Here's a quick update after my first week of listening. I've been listening mostly to a couple different audiobooks, and there are two distinct accents. One of the accents has a strange vowel sound that I can't duplicate and that "sj" sound is a bit unusual, but I think I recognize when it happens in one of the accents. I've also listened to several Pimsleur lessons, but they're very simplistic with not much actual Swedish content. If I could just sit down for coffee with a friendly native Swedish speaker, and asked them to say a few things, I could probably learn more in half an hour than in all 10 pimsleur lessons.
With that in mind, I think I'll be able to make good progress once I can bootstrap myself with some vocabulary. I might try the Moses method and hack through "colloquial Swedish" or something like that. I'll probably read through several chapters just to get a basic understanding and see what's there, and then go back and pick some words that I think are "important" and add them to Anki. At first glance, it appears to me that the German-language books about learning Swedish are better than the English ones, so I might try to find some of those to work through instead. I can't do any of that sort of stuff while I'm at work though, so I guess it's time for me to get back to an audiobook. I'm getting more and more moments where I suddenly understand a sentence, so it's encouraging so far. total Swedish listening done: 14.5 hours goal: 27 hours by the end of the week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 65 15 December 2009 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
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Doviende, if you tell me the name of the narrator, I might be able to figure out the accent. Could you describe the vowel sound? Maybe you know a few words with that vowel? As for the sj/skj/stj/sch/sk sound (did I forget any spelling variation?) it's basically pronounced in two ways:
#1 [ɕ] according to IPA, but similar enough to [ʃ] as in "sheep" (or perhaps a sound between pinyin x and sh). #2 the sound you make when cooling a cup of hot chocolate, without necessarily pouting the lips. (/ɧ/, voiceless palatal-velar fricative, if that helps) The sounds of tj/kj/ are never "blown" as in #2, rather as #1 (with /tj/ similar to pinyin x and /kj/ to pinyin sh). Confusing? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5985 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 13 of 65 15 December 2009 at 6:33pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, after I get home from work I'll try and clip out a few example sentences that illustrate the sound.
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| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5985 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 14 of 65 16 December 2009 at 4:21am | IP Logged |
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ok, I uploaded some collected sound samples to my blog, here
two samples are from an audiobook where the speaker has this accent, and the other two samples are from the female speaker in Pimsleur Swedish. The other speakers I've listened to don't seem to do their vowels like this. To me it sounds like some sort of throat constriction or maybe nasalization somehow. Any advice on how to produce this would be appreciated. I'd also like some info on what sort of accent this is, if possible. thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 65 17 December 2009 at 12:39am | IP Logged |
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Alright, sample 1 and 2 is Scanian accent, or "skånska". Apart from the throaty r:s which you must have noticed, the long vowels - in this case, [iː] - have a slight diphtong colour, something between [iː] and [eɪ̯]. Same in sample 3, although that accent is plain "rikssvenska" (to my ears, it's a very exaggerated sing-song prosody, typical for audio courses and voice overs). Sample 4 has roughly the same diphtong-coloured [iː].
Transcripts: 1 Jag hade fyllt 40, och mitt liv hade sedan nästan fem... (femton?) 2 Länge trodde jag att livet måste se ut så här för min del. 3 Hej! Hur står det till? 4 Jag vill gärna dricka vin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5985 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 16 of 65 17 December 2009 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
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I've just discovered Olle Kjellin, and I love the two articles I just read.
First, this is mandatory reading for anyone learning swedish: A new and simpler terminology for Swedish prosody And his article about his "chorus" method, and about learning prosody: Effects of prosody on second language learning That second one is valuable for any language learner. I'm going to try to apply his method soon, by cutting out some sentences from some audiobooks and working on that one sentence over and over until I can pronounce it properly. I'll have to find something that I have a transcript for, though, so I can understand what was said. Hopefully my book will arrive soon, and then I'll have a matching pair of audio + dead tree. In the mean time, I've been listening to swedish radio from http://www.listenlive.eu/sweden.html. Total swedish listening so far: 23.5 / 27 (I can probably hit my goal a day early if I get another 3.5hrs today) Edited by doviende on 17 December 2009 at 10:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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