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How do the Swedish learn English

  Tags: Swedish | English
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
61 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>
Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5057 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 33 of 61
13 March 2013 at 6:20pm | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
beano wrote:

You could easily build a great career in France or Germany without needing to know
other languages, or at least not to have a fantastic grasp of them. Like you say, there
is also a vast amount of literature and media available in the major European
languages.


The problem comes in when you work in anything that is internationally based. I know
the university system in Germany quite well, and for various reasons it just isn't as
good as the UK or USA, despite the relative wealth of the country. A big contributing
factor is that the system runs on German, despite English having become the defacto
language of science.

My wife works in London at one of the top universities, and in her department there is
only ONE British academic. All the rest are German, Dutch, Swedish, Australian, Israeli
etc. She is now considering a job in Germany, and of course it was advertised in
German, and the only candidates were German or Austrian.


If they are scientist, they are able to read English articles and books anyway, so why
are German universities worse?
1 person has voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4534 days ago
1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 34 of 61
13 March 2013 at 6:48pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:

If they are scientist, they are able to read English articles and books anyway, so why
are German universities worse?[/QUOTE]

It's not all to do with language, Germany loses many good academics to other countries (notably UK and USA) because of the lousy career paths inherent in their system.

But certainly a major difference between the UK and Germany is that Germany can only attract people from Austria/Germany/Switerland, whereas the UK can hire anybody in the World. This has a cumulative effect, good people make for better departments, which then attract better academics.

There are obviously exceptions, but when I worked for one of the top neuroscience journals in the States, it was surprising how few good papers we got relative to the UK (and most of these came out of the Max Planck Institutes where English is standard). That can't be put down to the education system; plenty of German students end up in top positions overseas.

Don't get me wrong. There are certainly good academics in Germany, but the country is under-performing significantly given its wealth. France is in much worse shape, but I don't know the system well enough to really know why, other than to think that it's even more closed than Germany.
1 person has voted this message useful



tritone
Senior Member
United States
reflectionsinpo
Joined 6121 days ago
246 posts - 385 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French

 
 Message 35 of 61
13 March 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged 
marklewis1234 wrote:
I am always interested in how the Swedish, and people from other Scandinavian countries
manage to learn English to such a high level without even having to leave the country.
What is the secret?


Eng: It is easy for them.
Swed: Det är lätt för dem.

All they have to do is learn words, and put them together much same way they do in Swedish.














3 persons have voted this message useful



Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4669 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 36 of 61
13 March 2013 at 9:48pm | IP Logged 
Swedish people (as well as people from other Nordic countries) have problems with the [z] sound.
Frequently they:

1) pronounce English /z/ as [s]:   music (with [s]), zebra (with [s]), eyes (with [s]) etc...
loose [s] = lose [s]

2) become aware of it, and try to over-compensate it, by using [z] in cases where English has [s]:   closer, basically, releasing, passerby etc...This is called ''hypercorrection ''.

How can an English teacher give an A to /z/ ~ /s/ merging pupils is beyond me...

Edited by Medulin on 13 March 2013 at 9:54pm
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Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4669 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 37 of 61
13 March 2013 at 10:07pm | IP Logged 
Ogrim wrote:
Many interesting contributions here. As regards terminology, from my experience it depends a lot on the sector or area of work. Certainly in Norway there exsists a Norwegian terminology for e.g. medicine, but the professionals (doctors) will often use the technical terms, which are Greek or Latin words. In engineering, IT and similar, professionals will more often use English terminology (and e.g. oil companies in Norway often have English as their working language due to many foreign employees).

As regards films and books, firstly films are never dubbed in Norway, with the exception of children movies, because you don't expect a 6-year old to be able to read subtitles. As for literature, of course well known authors and bestsellers are translated into Norwegian, but if you are after less "commercial" literature, you'll have to turn to the original. That being said, I think a lot more is translated from English than from other languages such as Italian or Spanish.

And finally, as Norwegians are starting to turn to e-books, they buy even more English literature in the original, since Norwegian e-books are few, very expensive and the technical solutions chosen by the big editorials are not good at all.


But many foreign books are not ( originally) in English.
Anna Gavalda's book ''Saman er ein mindre aleine'' was a huge commercial success in Norway, and it was published/translated in Nynorsk.

Edited by Medulin on 13 March 2013 at 10:08pm
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Improbably
Diglot
Newbie
Norway
Joined 4937 days ago
34 posts - 87 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English

 
 Message 38 of 61
13 March 2013 at 11:40pm | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
How can an English teacher give an A to /z/ ~ /s/ merging pupils is beyond me...


How an English teacher can give an A to pupils who can't at will be mistaken for college educated natives with perfect RP is beyond me...
3 persons have voted this message useful



beano
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4623 days ago
1049 posts - 2152 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian

 
 Message 39 of 61
14 March 2013 at 12:26am | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
beano wrote:

You could easily build a great career in France or Germany without needing to know other languages, or at
least not to have a fantastic grasp of them. Like you say, there is also a vast amount of literature and media
available in the major European languages.


The problem comes in when you work in anything that is internationally based. I know the university system
in Germany quite well, and for various reasons it just isn't as good as the UK or USA, despite the relative
wealth of the country. A big contributing factor is that the system runs on German, despite English having
become the defacto language of science.

My wife works in London at one of the top universities, and in her department there is only ONE British
academic. All the rest are German, Dutch, Swedish, Australian, Israeli etc. She is now considering a job in
Germany, and of course it was advertised in German, and the only candidates were German or Austrian.



German is the language of one the world's biggest economies so of course it will be heavily used within their
own academic system. It's hardly surprising that posts are filled by German speakers, just as you need
English in order to work at a UK university. If you want to work for a German institution, you are expected to
know German. That's just the way it is and I see that as a healthy state of affairs.
2 persons have voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4534 days ago
1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 40 of 61
14 March 2013 at 12:41pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:

German is the language of one the world's biggest economies so of course it will be heavily used within their
own academic system. It's hardly surprising that posts are filled by German speakers, just as you need
English in order to work at a UK university. If you want to work for a German institution, you are expected to
know German. That's just the way it is and I see that as a healthy state of affairs.


I am sure many agree with you.

Given German is such a prosperous country, don't you think it's a shame that on various rankings (e.g., http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-ran kings) there is NOT ONE university ranked in the top 50 worldwide? Even Australia has a couple I don't that's healthy at all for a country that wants to take a leadership role in the Europe.

I am not suggesting German universities switch over to English. I am just stating the fact that by keeping to German they make it extremely hard, if not impossible, to reach World class status, at least in terms of research output, simply because they cannot compete in hiring the best people.

Do you think it's unhealthy that various international programs in other countries (e.g., Holland) use English and hire accordingly?


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