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Swedish/Sweden is tiny and unimportant? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5336 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 39 02 May 2011 at 3:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I worked so hard last year to learn how to learn languages. Well, I was working to
learn a language but I kept on changing and picked up a bunch of really great advice to learn languages. The reason I kept skipping around so much is because I quickly lost inspiration. Swedish doesn't bug me too much (aside from the really strange orthography and pronunciation), but I've been told learning Swedish will yield minimal benefits as opposed to something like Spanish (which I find to be EXTREMELY boring, no offense, the grammar is just difficult to me). That is somewhat true, but there has to be some benefit to knowing Swedish. I don't plan on living in Sweden, nor will I get to visit very often, but I know there are many intelligence benefits and could help with Dutch (or German?). There's also the fact that most Swedes speak decent English and are eager to practice with a native. All rambling aside, what do you think of Swedish? Is it useless or am I being decieved? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5805 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 39 02 May 2011 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Why did you pick Swedish in the first place? If it no longer holds your interest, switch
to German or something else. You have to want to learn the language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5352 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 39 02 May 2011 at 4:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't think of many practical reasons to learn Swedish. I so desperately want to learn one of the Scandinavian languages myself, but I can never commit to one (or get started learning) because I personally find the pronunciation so difficult to hear and then mimic.
Why would I want to learn Swedish (or one of the other modern Scandinavian tongues)? -Similarities to other Germanic languages. I have a fairly good handle on German and English, and have some understanding of Dutch. The Scandinavian branch would be easy to learn with this knowledge. The reverse is true as well, with knowledge of Swedish, it would be easier to learn another Germanic tongue (German being the most significant). -Interest in Vikings. Maybe it would be better to learn Old Norse, but I am not sure how many non-scholarly people learn to speak it. If you are interested in Vikings, or have Viking ancestry, it might be neat to learn some Swedish. I personally want to partake in Viking reenacting some day, and would want to be able to speak a Scandinavian company while drinking homemade mead. -Difficulty. Although I find the pronunciation to be extremely difficult to hear with the Scandinavian tongues, they all have relatively simple grammars. From a grammatical perspective, I would imagine it to be easier to learn Swedish than its brother German. -Literature. I am not sure about good Swedish authors, but with the knowledge of a Scandinavian tongue (even if it isn’t Danish), you could probably read through Hans Christen Andersen’s fairytales in their original language. I have a love for the classics, as well as a love for languages, so this would be a selling point to me. Reasons not to learn a Scandinavian tongue: -Usefulness. When I was in Denmark, my Danish friends did not encourage me to learn much Danish, and they also found it to be silly that I purchased a Danish dictionary before I left. The problem with learning any Scandinavian language, that I see, is that the natives have such a high command of English (one of my friends even knew English words that I was not familiar with!) that it will be very difficult to get speaking practice and develop your skills to any sort of useful level, without the natives switching to English. Furthermore, Swedish is a less widely spoken language than say, German. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5336 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 4 of 39 02 May 2011 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Linguistically it's still interesting, I love the way it's written. But I can't stand
that it isn't popular, it just seems impractical to spend so much time on Swedish as a second language. Problem is, a lot of major languages can't seem to hold my attention either. Also, resources don't come by me very easily and I already have some Swedish books. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 5 of 39 02 May 2011 at 5:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Fight the power! I strongly support the learning of unpopular languages.
16 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5336 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 6 of 39 02 May 2011 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks :) Gave me a bit more inspiration for Swedish. I'm already slightly delved into Swedish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 7 of 39 02 May 2011 at 7:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm afraid the simple answer is yes, in the grand scheme of things, Swedish is tiny and unimportant. And yes, we Swedes do, as a general rule, have a decent command of English. If you don't plan to visit Sweden more than a few short times, what you'll get from Swedish is:
* Literature. Strindberg, Astrid Lindgren, Jan Gillou, Selma Lagerlöf, Nils Ferlin, Vilhelm Moberg ... There is no shortage of good literature in Swedish, if you're into a certain type of books. There are plenty of more modern books such as mystery novels, too. Oh, and the Stieg Larsson books that are all the rage nowadays. * Movies. Terrible as we are at action movies (maybe the Millenium movies are an exception, I haven't seen them), we are the kings of embarrassment comedy. Movies like Kopps and Smala Sussie are probably among the best in the world. * The web. We are, as a population, highly present online, and there is no shortage of websites in Swedish if you go looking for them. EDIT: "have a decenet command of English", haha! Edited by Ari on 02 May 2011 at 7:49am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4964 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 8 of 39 02 May 2011 at 8:33am | IP Logged | ||
And you get for free some of the best literature of Finland, starting from J.L. Runeberg. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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