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 Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing |  | |
| Espling Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5945 days ago 17 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 9 of 16 14 August 2008 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It might be important to note that a high number of Swedes write horribly incorrect Swedish and most obvious would be the constantly debated "de"(they) and "dem"(them) versus "dom" problem. The problem being that usually both "de" and "dem" are pronounced the same in casual conversation.
If one tries learning Swedish through Swedish friends over the internet who do not know/do not care about this, one will probably learn broken Swedish. There are many such problems and they are most definitely not limited to internet lingo. For example the many compound words that are incorrectly written as non-compound words, known as "särskrivning" in Swedish. The problem is that in swedish this mistake is very common and actually changes the meaning of the sentences. Examples being "en brun hårig kvinna" (a brown hairy woman) versus "en brunhårig kvinna" (a brown-haired woman). Although funny to see sometimes, these faults can be infuriating when found in newspapers or the like. (I am not confident enough to make actual article material, but feel free to edit or use however you wish.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5876 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 10 of 16 26 November 2008 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The problem with some of what is written here is that it is written by native speaking Swedes who generally far over-rate the difficulty of their language. For example, the de dom thing above might confuse Swedes who learned to speak it before they wrote it, but does not really confuse foreign language learners at all.
We already have 2 words for "they" and "them", thus naturally track which is the subject and object anyway. The equivelent problem for an English speaker is du-dig since we say "you" for both in English, and thus do not naturally track subject-object for the second person in our own language. But that is easily fixed when you learn it since we already track it for I-me, He-him, etc anyway. So for mine, a text on the grammar goes: Grammar Swedish, being a Germanic language shares much of its word order and a large amount of its vocab in slightly modified forms with other Germanic languages such as English. Swedish has a simple grammar system which, despite some differences, is very similar to English. Verbs follow a similar patter to English: the infinitive (e.g. ringa -- to ring), the present (e.g. ringer -- rings), the past (e.g. ringde -- rang) and the supine (e.g. ringt -- rung). Although there are some irregulars, simple rules dictate the modification of the infinitive through the tenses as in English. There is also an additional tense: the imperative (e.g. ring! -- ring!). It has 2 genders, the common and neuter. Definite articles are added to the end of nouns as a suffix. Plural forms also have some irregulars that you just have to learn (just as child to children is irregular in English). Adjectives and nouns need to agree in number and gender. None of these grammatical features cause any real problems with some familiarity with the language. Pronunciation: Swedish causes some real difficulties with the production of some of the sounds for English speaking beginners. A little bit of practice in producing the sounds by changing the shape of your mouth and where you hold your tongue in your mouth will have you reliably producing them correctly. Although there are slightly fewer sounds than in English (English has 12 vowels, 9 diphthongs and 24 consonants; Swedish has 9 vowels that are long and short, making effectively 17/18 vowels phonemes and 18 consonants, it does not have any diphthongs), some of the sounds it does have do not have an equivalent in English. The vowel sounds take some learning. Particularly the ä, y, å and u. (Although the y is similar to the French u and the German ü). Swedish has short and long vowels, the spelling of which is not very consistent. It also has an acute accent and a grave accent that are not indicated in the spelling. The consonant that causes problems is the sj sound that takes a lot of imitation to get close to correct. The overall sound of a Swedish sentence takes on its own melody, or sing-song and in the intermediate phase you will need to concentrate on the melody. It is part of the beauty of learning this language. Difficulty: Overall I rate this language a ** -- quite easy to learn. The grammar is simple, verbs do not require any complex conjugation, and the language shares roots with English and German meaning there is much shared vocab. The pronunciation can cause some challenges for a beginner, but you can be understood even with mistakes and don't need to be as precise in getting the sounds perfect like French. Chick Factor: Swedish is a language with a beautiful melody and a sound production that sounds very foreign, attractive and difficult to mono-lingual English speakers. Speaking it turns the heads of people in a multi-lingual environment. Because it is a small language where most of the native speakers speak English also, speaking Swedish indicates an intimacy with Sweden and its people that listeners find attractive. Recommended Books "The Essentials of Swedish Grammar: a practical guide to the mastery of Swedish", Åke Viberg, Kerstin Ballardini and Sune Stjärnlöf, Passport Books, 1984. Edited by SlickAs on 30 November 2008 at 9:44pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Someswede Newbie Sweden Joined 5838 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 11 of 16 29 November 2008 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That is incorrect. Swedish has larger vowel inventory then English in monothongs. 18/17 wovels not 9 you see all 9 wovels exist in long and short version of them so therefor you get 18/17 wovels depending on dialect . Swedish is known for it's large number of vowels. So I hade object against that because it is missleading information you gave there. So next time be sure to get facts correct. Regards Edited by Someswede on 19 November 2009 at 4:29pm 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 16 29 November 2008 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Wikipedia confirms this:
There's a difference between vowels/consonants and phonemes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5876 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 13 of 16 30 November 2008 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You are quite correct, and I have edited my above post. Thanks.
I think that this is an example of a native Swede wanting to scream at me "Our language is really difficult god damn it! Really really difficult! I want it to be 4 stars for difficulty, like Persian. Don't you dare say it is easy! It is not! It is not easy, you hear? ... The administrator of this site wrote here
You will note that the US Governmnet Defense Language Institute grades Swedish as a Group I language (the easiest) right along side Spanish and Portugese. German is harder: Group II. Finnish and Russian are Group III. Link is here Edited by SlickAs on 01 December 2008 at 12:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Someswede Newbie Sweden Joined 5838 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 14 of 16 02 December 2008 at 1:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I was not talking about how hard or easy anything easy just that was incorrect information. Diffiultly of languages is a very subjectiv thing and depends on the mother tongue you have. It depends also on individual aspects some might consider things to be hard while others easy. It depends also on what weakness or strentgh one might have. For an example one might be good with prounounciation and phonology and others might be good on grammer. If people have problem with Swedish then it is on the phonological and prosody at least in my experience. For an example not everyday I meat people who can proform a sje-sound correct and sometimes stress and pitch accent is a problem as well for those who want to speak it very well. So don't put words in my mouth my firend with all respect and love. I just said that you where not factual correct. Have a good day. Edited by Someswede on 02 December 2008 at 10:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5876 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 15 of 16 04 January 2009 at 7:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
OK, we all agree then. I wont put words into your mouth, and there is nothing in the above that you would like to change. If that is all right, then when the administrator is looking for something to publish on the main site, there we are all cool, right? Or is there something above that you would like to change? Speak now or forever hold your peace. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Elwing Tetraglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5507 days ago 43 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Swedish, Finnish*, English, French Studies: Norwegian | Message 16 of 16 29 October 2009 at 1:05am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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To add to the usefulness (someone phrase this nicely, please):
-After learning Swedish you can understand Norwegian fairly easily as well as some Danish due to these languages being closely related. -About 5,5% of the population of Finland speak Swedish as their first language and the language is widely understood in the country. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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