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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 17 of 39 02 May 2011 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Wow! All these responses are great! Thanks guys :)
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| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5107 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 39 03 May 2011 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just thought I'd mention - your description of the meaning and usage of "pax" in Swedish sounds very similar to the English slang "bagsy". As in "Bagsy front seat" when car-sharing or "Bagsy first go" on something. You can also "bagsy" somebody else such as "bagsy you go to the bar" when in a bar and you want your friend to go and get the drinks.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 19 of 39 03 May 2011 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Edited by mick33 on 03 May 2011 at 12:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5107 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 39 03 May 2011 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would also like to add:
I have the teach yourself Swedish book. I bought it after meeting a Swedish girl in a bar when I was "away" many years ago. She still remains a friend but - armed with what I "thought" I knew from that book, and lashings of alcohol and ego, I once proudly led a group of friends into a Scandinavian bar on Crete proclaiming something along the lines of "Watch this". I then proceeded to spend most of the night making a total prat of myself as I bombarded any girl who would listen (and who did not want to listen) with rudimentary phrases I had committed to memory. I distinctly remember "hysnykel" (sp?) (house key) as being one of my favourites as I thought that sounded "most Swedish". My friends ended up spending the night with some absolute stunners whilst I returned back onboard and ate a solitary potnoodle before going to bed. I was young and silly in those days :) There may be a moral in there somewhere. Edited by HMS on 03 May 2011 at 12:48am 3 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 21 of 39 03 May 2011 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Mostly about arrogance haha. I'll make sure to be more fluent before that :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5107 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 39 03 May 2011 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think it was a combination of - my ignorance and the fact they even probably spoke better English than I, so me feeling rather proud about knowing a few words in a foreign language didn't even register or cause a flicker in their interest. They probably felt like they were being hounded by a 4 year old!
I have to say though, using rudimentary Swedish In Norway and Denmark did appear to please those who I spoke it to. Just simple please & thankyou type things was all I was really capable of but I did get the impression it could have "opened doors" had I known more or tried harder. 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 23 of 39 03 May 2011 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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An advantage of being in a country where most peaople speak decent English is that people you meet might not feel so desperate to "practice their English".
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| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 24 of 39 08 May 2011 at 6:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As a newbie, hello.. for a long time I procrastinated learning languages because I found an excuse to give up.
Now I have a different mentality and it's helped tremendously. I started learning German on my own 7 months ago and in that time I think I've achieved 2-3 years worth of study (I HAD TIME, I'm not a genius people). I always wanted to learn German because it's vocabulary is different and because people kept saying it is hard, and I like to do what's hard. It is hard to get used to their word order at first, but one day it happens and now it just sounds normal to me now to put ''aus'' or ''ab'' at the end of a long sentence (actually it makes sense!) Anyway, what does that all mean? You have to have a purpose to learn something. It doesn't have to be a productive purpose, just the purpose of proving to yourself something is good enough. When you start coming up with reasons or excuses as to why it's worth or not learning a language, you won't. Swedish... I want to learn it too. Because I'm just a pragmatic Virgo, I am learning languages with large number of speakers that are related to my native languages first. That means Portuguese, German, and soon French (I took French in high school I just need to recover my pronounciation and vocabulary). So my approach, at least in my view, will give me the biggest bang for my time and effort. My goal is in a year or two to be competent in those three languages. Because Swedish is not a language with many speakers, as much as I want to learn I just decided my efforts would simply be more rewarding learning the languages I chose first. My plan is, once I have some advanced fluency in German, Portuguese and French, to hit Mandarin Chinese. I won't teach myself though, I will go to proper schooling and if possible a real immersion situation in the future. While I learn Chinese (a long term effort), I will learn Italian and Swedish on the side... I won't be so obsessive as I have been with Portuguese and German though (or French). I will take it more leisurely with them. So basically, you have to just have fun and understand that 50% of the effort is just starting to learn. Once you get going, if you really want to learn, you won't stop. If you get tired, that means it's not something you really are inspired to do. Good luck. Edited by outcast on 08 May 2011 at 6:30am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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