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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4557 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 33 of 37 01 September 2013 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm really glad you asked, because my answer probably isn't what you expected. (Or maybe it is. Am I that predictable?) Yes, I think being a native Finnish speaker does give me a sizeable discount in learning Swedish. Allow me to explain. The most obvious starting point are cognates, which number in the thousands. According to the Finnish Wikipedia, a professor Kaisa Häkkinen has written in Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja, the "Ethymological Dictionary of Modern Finnish", that there are at least 4000 Swedish loanwords in Finnish. In addition, there are lots of calques or words borrowed through literal translation--by my own estimation possibly more than actual cognates, though I realize this is a topic best tackled with hard evidence rather than subjective impressions. A native speaker of German, English, or Dutch probably enjoys an even more pronounced advantage in this area, but I feel like a lot of people don't realize just how much "related" vocabulary Finnish and Swedish share. Another angle to consider is how much Finland and Sweden have in common when it comes to societal structures, politics, and the overall way of life. I know I'm treading on dangerous ground here, as I've never lived in Sweden and only have a handful of Swedish friends, but it does seem to me that for a Finn learning Swedish, there isn't much of a cultural gap to bridge. American English, which I've had lots of contact with over the years, seems almost exotic in comparison (although, of course it's a great deal less so than Japanese or Greenlandic). In any case, I don't think it's far-fetched to suggest that a Finn on average has a slight cultural leg-up over a non-European learner, at least. While I think the general perception on this is overly pessimistic, I don't want to misrepresent the facts: despite all the centuries of contact Finnish and Swedish have had, the two languages are genetically unrelated. A good many of the numerous cognates I referred to earlier are quite opaque, especially to someone who doesn't know what to look for. It's ridiculous to me now, but after my six years of mandatory Swedish, I was only aware of a handful. And let's not forget that I had already had four years of English and German before I started Swedish in the 7th grade.
Jeff probably has a point here. I began to notice the correspondencies and similarities only after I started learning Swedish on my own through massive input, by which point I already had a solid grounding in grammar and vocabulary. I had also long since come to terms with the "spirit" of Germanic languges. All that being said, I now encounter new cognates and calques almost every day and couldn't be happier about it. It was a long time coming, but a discount is still a discount. :-) Edited by sans-serif on 07 September 2013 at 1:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4557 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 34 of 37 01 September 2013 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Amen. It's a shame that so many people waste the opportunity by rebelling against the so called pakkoruotsi or tvångssvenska. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4557 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 35 of 37 10 September 2013 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm now done reading 1Q84 and expect to finish The Glass Bead Game later this week! Both books have been great—4 or 4.5 out of 5, I'd say—and I warmly recommend them to anyone with an appetite for deliberately paced, thoughtful stories. Murakami is quirky and funny, and a bit all over the place, while Hesse's language is solid and elegant, every sentence carefully crafted. Some readers would probably find Murakami too weird and Hesse quite dry, but as someone who has always mostly read fantasy, I found both books a refreshing change of pace.
As I already mentioned in an earlier post, my next books will be Den döende dandyn by Mari Jungstedt for Swedish, and Warren Buffett: Das Leben ist wie ein Schneeball for German. My listening regimen will remain the same: podcasts in Swedish, German, English and Danish in my down time. At this point it seems unlikely that I will be ready to shift my focus to French by the end of the year unless I pick up the pace with German, but I'm too excited about my improved reading comfort in Swedish to put it on hold now. French will have to wait a little while longer. :-) Edited by sans-serif on 10 September 2013 at 6:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4557 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 36 of 37 14 October 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been neglecting German for the past two or three weeks and instead done more Swedish. Just this morning I finished shadowing Hungerspelen, narrated by Rebecka Hemse whose accent I really like. All this regular pronunciation practice is starting to add up, and I'd go as far as to say that my spoken Swedish sounds better right now than it ever has before. What I suspect is that I've had a lot of 'latent' skills, in the sense that I've known more or less what I want to sound like and how I'm supposed to be moving my mouth and tongue, but I've been lacking the motor skills to put it all together. This has been such an encouraging experience that I plan to continue my (almost) daily shadowing sessions to see how far it'll take me.
Prior to my fling with shadowing I got to a decent start with the Warren Buffet biography, reading the first 200 or so pages, before getting sidetracked by another pet project of mine: German–Swedish LR. I have a paperback of Steve Jobs' biography in Swedish and the audio book in German, which I listen to at triple speed. It's been a lot of fun and although I miss some details, I've found it quite manageable after the initial adjustment. I first tried double speed but that had me alternating between reading and listening, which is not what I was looking to do. Triple speed forces me to first and foremost listen to the audio; I can only skim the Swedish text as I plow ahead, taking note of how such and such words were translated, but not really reading in the real sense of the word. This way it's predominantly a German activity and really puts my listening skills to the test. Edited by sans-serif on 16 October 2013 at 6:36pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 37 of 37 14 October 2013 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Belated thanks for the reply above, and it wasn't the reply I was expecting! :-)
BTW, triple-speed L-R in a L2-L3 eh? I think that would definitely qualify for the "language nerd" thread. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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