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Meliora Cogito’s Swedish log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Meliora Cogito Triglot Newbie DenmarkRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6057 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, French | Message 1 of 3 03 March 2008 at 6:46am | IP Logged |
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This log is intended to describe my progress of learning Swedish. My intensive studies start from this date on, 3 March 2008.
Why Swedish? The reason I want to learn the language is that I've begun the quest towards being able to speak 11 specific languages by the age of forty. Being a native Dane (with a Norwegian father), I've figured that mastering all aspects of the the three Scandivanian languages is something I have to be capable of. Besides this my girlfriend is Swedish and thus offers great practice opportunity. My present level of Swedish Because of the close relation between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish I don't start learning from scratch. I already posses a 90% understanding of spoken Swedish, which enables me of watching television, hearing music and interacting with groups of native Swedes and at the same time understanding almost everything. This morning I tested my reading ability. I decided to start reading the Swedish novel "Smuts" by Katarina Wennstam in order to decide how many pages I read per hour and to see approximately how many words and expressions I don't understand per page. The format and thus the pages of the book are small and thus really don't say that much, but nonetheless it turned out that I read 38 pages pro hour. There were approximately 3-4 words or expressions that I didn't know per page. I decided to read on and go with the flow instead of looking up words, mostly since I haven't yet gotten hold of a Swedish dictionary. Besides reading and understanding - and this is the crucial point - my speaking and writing abilities are non-existing. I wish to even out this considerable gap between my abilities. My plan is to do this with the help of a variety of means. Learning plan I'm going to live in Germany for the next five months, which limites the exposure to real-life Swedish. However, this shouldn't be much of an obstacle. My plan is to follow a Swedish course twice a week, study intensively by myself, practice with my girlfriend and maybe hire a professional native phonetician if I can find one in Heidelberg, Baden-Würtemberg, where I live. My plan is to read novels, use audio courses, read the news on the internet (like aftonbladet.se), watch web-tv, chat on msn-messenger with Swedish friends and anything else that will expose me to real-life Swedish. My plan is to post in this log as often as possible. I'm looking very much forward to embarking on this journey. Feel free to join me by posting comments. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Meliora Cogito Triglot Newbie DenmarkRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6057 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, French | Message 2 of 3 12 March 2008 at 4:45am | IP Logged |
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Now approximately a week has gone by and I've been studying Swedish actively 2 hours everyday. I spent the last ten days in Stockholm, which additionally gave me the opportunity of watching Swedish television and spending time with native speakers.
I have completed the novel "Smuts" by Katarina Wennstam, which I find is a fairly good book, which makes you think about prostitution in another way. I read through it without looking up one single word. This - I think - trained my ability of learning from context, which I found very rewarding. I can even feel the benefits when reading German, where I've also gotten better at figuring out the meaning of words without the help of a dictionary. In addition I've read a Swedish book on value added tax (I study law). Suprisingly, I didn't find the language any more complicated than ordinary litterature. This might be because legal litterature is written in a more conservative language, which resembles Danish - my native tongue - to a greater deal. Now I started reading "Snabba Cash" by Jens Lapidus. This is a book that really captures my attention! I can't hardly put it down once I've started reading. The novel contains a lot of slang, but I seem to get hold of most of it and have already learned a number of new words and expressions. I've installed a gadget on my Windows Vista desktop that allows me to browse through a number of Swedish radio and tv stations on the web. Really convinient. I listen to conversational shows every now and then in order to sharpen my ability of understanding. I would say that my level of understanding is somewhere around 90%. And now my biggest challenge: Speaking. I take one lesson of the Pimsleur Swedish Course I everyday and I understand everything and get the sentences grammatically right almost everytime. However, the pronuncitation is really difficult and my present level is not satisfying. I try really hard and I improve. There is a number of difficult sounds that I need to learn to master. I find the course helpful though. At present my Swedish girlfriend is away travelling for 4 weeks, but before we started speaking Swedish and Danish respectively every now and then. An awesome experience and a departure from German, which up until now has been our common language. This helps. In two weeks time I start taking individual speaking lessons with a proffessional native Swede here in Heidelberg, Germany twice a week. I'm looking very much forward to this. In particular I have a hard time capturing the "melody" of the Swedish language. Growing up listening mostly to Danish, Norwegian and the Scania-dialect of south-eastern Sweden, I feel that I yet have a lot of work in front of me before I get hold of the more neutral Stockholm-dialect. Does anybody happen to know if there is a good English-Swedish Swedish-English or Danish-Swedish Swedish-Danish dictionary out there which they would recommend? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thomas Newbie Japan rhinospike.com Joined 6202 days ago 38 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Swedish | Message 3 of 3 12 March 2008 at 7:40am | IP Logged |
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Good luck in Swedish! I am also studying the language, although I am way more of a beginner than you are. Regarding your Windows Vista gadget, what is it called? Is it free and is there a version for XP? I'd be interested in using something like that to listen to Swedish radio and watch Swedish TV.
I don't have a paper Swedish dictionary, but I've been using Lexin, an online dictionary. Also, just out of curiosity, which 11 languages are you aiming to master by age 40? I look forward to reading your log! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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