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Talking to Swedes in Swedish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5621 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 22 29 April 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
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I've heard that the Dutch are very difficult to speak to in Dutch if you're not completely fluent, and their natural response is to go into English if you sound like you're not that good.
Are the Swedish any more patient with learners, or do learners of Swedish report similar issues to learners of Dutch? Edited by COF on 29 April 2012 at 8:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4747 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 2 of 22 29 April 2012 at 10:13pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know about about Swedish people in Sweden, but I have several friends living here
in the states who speak Swedish and they love talking to me, even with the little that I know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6449 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 3 of 22 29 April 2012 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
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It usually depend on the person speaking, to be honest. When tired, both usually revert to English due to laziness.
It's easier for them to talk, and to us it usually do not matter (though tired Swede's English sounds like crap :P). If you speak enough Swedish to hold a conversation, no one but a real douche would answer you in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6699 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 22 30 April 2012 at 12:17am | IP Logged |
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Unless your version of the language is at particularly low level (maybe it doesn't even sound anything like Swedish), there's no reason why we should respond in English.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6449 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 5 of 22 30 April 2012 at 12:25am | IP Logged |
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If someone do answer you in Swedish, just reply "Jag skulle helst vilja att du pratar svenska med mig" "I would
rather that you speak Swedish with me". 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4497 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 22 30 April 2012 at 1:08am | IP Logged |
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I think the trick is to be (and this goes for every English speaker pretty much, since everyone's always so anxious to practice their English)
a) be persistent you want to learn THEIR language and emphasize this b) WORK ON YOUR ACCENT. How do I tell if someone is foreign? Because of the way they speak, the way they use intonation in sentences, the way they pronounce hard phonemes, etc. Dutch people, because they're used to a variety of accents and dialects, can pick out a foreign pronunciation of English really quickly (and so can the Swedes, Danes, etc) and thus, especially when a reversion to English is an easy response for both people, this will lead to the person thinking (perhaps mistakenly): his Dutch/Swedish/Hebrew/Danish/Gibberish is crappola frappola, I'm going to make this easy for everybody involved and just speak English, because we're both going to communicate easily. First impressions matter, and if their impression is that your pronunciation is sloppy, then they can mistakenly assume your Dutch is bad (when in fact it could be perfect in every other aspect, it just isn't in terms of pronunciation). If you have a trace of an accent, that should not matter, but if you're making quite common and egregious mistakes (like the typical American rhotic r in places where Dutch is totally non-rhotic most of the time and even uses guttural r's or trilled r's, depending on the speaker), then you will sound ridiculous and be singled out as foreign directly. You're going to have to be very eloquent to convince people your pronunciation is the only flaw in your Dutch (same if you're not pronouncing the hard Dutch g or any of the 4 million vowel sounds properly). In other words, be a perfectionist about speech and be a pain in the ass, be assertive, but I guess that's general advice for everybody. And don't let the random show-off asshole (like me) discourage you from speaking Swedish or Dutch or any other language where the natives like to just switch into English. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5141 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 7 of 22 05 May 2012 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
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One time I over-heard a conversation between an immigrant (or foreigner) and a native
Swede. The immigrant asked in perfect Swedish (except maybe for the pronunciation) when the train arrives. The Swedish man immediately replied - in English! After a while though he switched to Swedish when he noticed that the woman actually understand Swedish. A foreign appearance and a different accent can be enough for Swedes to reply in English, only to help this poor learner of course! Although this isn't always the case and I'm pretty sure that if you ask them to speak Swedish with you they won't object. Edited by WingSuet on 05 May 2012 at 3:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| juman Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5008 days ago 101 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French | Message 8 of 22 05 May 2012 at 6:14pm | IP Logged |
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Being a Swede myself it is actually quite natural for me to switch to English. In
sweden English is the second language learnt from an early age and it is not too uncommon for our workplaces requiring that we write emails and documentation etc in english. So when speaking with someone foreign it's a kind of autopilot to go to english for me... I have been working with people from all over the world and normally depending on the level of swedish they have (if they live here) the conversation is a mix of swedish and english and the combo "swenglish". Once I have met a person abroad that actually had studied swedish but the conversation still was a mix of English and swedish to make things more smooth. I don't mind speaking swedish with anyone but English is so close at hand and that is why I switch over. Have even had a longer conversation with an Englishman where he spoke swedish and I English. Can't really explain why that happened but just turned out like that... If you want to speak swedish just go ahead and I think you will notice if you keep it up we will let our Englishguard down. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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