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Swedish/Sweden is tiny and unimportant? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5347 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 33 of 39 18 August 2011 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually, it seems espejismo might be right. Sweden is introducing tuition fees for students not from an EU/EEA country or Switzerland starting this year (2011/2012). Link 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4859 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 34 of 39 18 August 2011 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Swedish is tiny and unimporant?! Swedish is very important! Knowing Swedish you can understand the lyrics of Lena Philipsson's, Linda Bengtzing's and Nane Grönvall's songs!
Ok, that was the cheapest joke possible... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Remster Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4805 days ago 120 posts - 134 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: German, French | Message 35 of 39 03 October 2011 at 10:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think the smaller the country and it's population, the less important it usually is.
There are some exceptions though, but in terms of functionality, a country with 9M inhabitants doesn't exert much influence in the world. Linguistically it's interesting though, like Dutch it has a lot of vowel sounds, the grammar is easier than German, but if you like Germanic lanuages, a NORTH-GERMANIC language might be interesting to acquire. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 36 of 39 03 October 2011 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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On the other hand, a speaker of any of the three Scandinavian languages can communicate with the neighbours (without too much difficulty), so suddenly that's 19.5 millions. Not that I suggest that anyone should go and learn a Scandinavian language for that very reason, but it's still a positive side effect.
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 37 of 39 03 October 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Jeff_lindqvist makes a good point here. After learning to read just a mere morcel of Swedish last year, I could already grasp the gist (often along with many details) of articles written in both Norwegian and Danish. This was a pleasant surprise and a bonus step up the language ladder.
Let me also add that Sweden produces brilliant comedies, fantasies, and thought-provoking stories, all of which can only really be best appreciated in the original language. There's certainly nothing small or unimportant about these great works and the prodigious authors, actors, directors and thinkers who create them. However, all this aside, it's really all down to how the OP feels and gets on with the language. The same could be said for living and working with a new group of people. For me, I didn't bother rationalising my instincts last year - the language just sounded beautiful and sonorous to my ears, and the culture immediately struck a chord with me like a close friend. This is why Swedish will always be big and important in my eyes, and why I hope to return one day and make it a more permanent part of my life. Edited by Teango on 03 October 2011 at 2:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 38 of 39 03 October 2011 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
:-) He's also the reason we went to Ystad. Lovely place. Pity we chose to go when it was under several feet of snow .... looked stunning, but made getting about a bit difficult... We'd also been to Copenhagen on the same trip, and this was before "Forbrydelsen" got shown on BBC4, so it was nice that we later recognised the many shots of City Hall. EDIT: On the language side, we'd spent the forgoing year "studying" (pretty casually) TYS Norwegian (we were also going to Oslo). I can't say we had a great deal of success on the listening or speaking front, but we were able to recognise a lot of written Danish, Swedish and Norwegian along the way, and were able to get quite a lot out of Norwegian newspapers, with the aid of the vocab lists from the TYS book. Edited by montmorency on 03 October 2011 at 11:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 39 of 39 03 October 2011 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've only once been to an IKEA because there aren't any near us, but on that occasion, I was tickled that the display books in the bookcases were all in Swedish. I suppose that for normal people, this would make them unattractive to steal. Perhaps they were reckoning without languages nuts. It was also fun that on the menu in the café they had Swedish meatballs. (This was in London) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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