Learning Swedish

Learning Swedish has proven to be just as hard as I thought it would be to learn! It is a language of many new sounds, many new rules and of course a few new letters (å, ä, ö).

Swedish may use the same alphabet, with three extra letters, as English but the way you say things is oh so very different. I got told the other day that Americans and New Zealanders and pretty much all other English speakers that we speak at the back of our mouth and swedes speak at the front. With this information I also got told that if I make a fish face with my hands pushing my checks forward my Swedish will sound perfect, even though I will look like a right silly person when I do it! 

Swedish has so many different groups of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs it is crazy! My school book is full of all of these different groups and words translated into English! The rules are pretty strait forward unlike English! I have only come across one rule that doesn’t make sense and has no reasoning behind it. I then think of English and I wonder how anyone has learnt it as a second language with all its unexplained rule! I have been able to get my head around most of the rules for Swedish nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, it is just remembering then when I speak and when I write which is the really hard part!

It is a great feeling when you understand something. But when you understand something in another language it is a whole new great feeling! At the moment I can understand quite a lot of Swedish but I have to concentrate and keep focused in class. I could swear this is the hardest I have ever worked at school in my whole life, trying to learn Swedish! Yesterday I was in my relgion class and they were having a large debate over something and nothing was written down and everyone was talking very fast, so I had no idea what was going on! Someone came up to me after class and (in English) asked me if I got any of the class because apparently it was quite interesting! I had to answer with, um well no… I am slowing getting the hang of understanding! But it helps if everyone speaks slowly!

Speaking is not coming on quite as well as understanding. When I do try to speak I am very nervous that I will say something and nobody will understand me because I am saying it all wrong! Also the things I can say are rather silly and not really conversation starters! One of the things I can say is ‘I play football’ (‘Jag spelar fotboll’ in Swedish). Not exactly the world’s most exciting sentence but it’s a start and you have to start from somewhere! I think the more confident I get with the language I will be happier speaking and more people will understand me! I also think speaking comes with time, I just want that time to hurry up and get here!

At my school I am in a course to help me learn Swedish. In this course there are different levels and you move up when you are good enough and/or pass a test! I have just been moved up a group! The reason for me moving up is because in C Group (the group I will now be in) it is more about talking in Swedish rather than learning all the rules and grammar, and talking in Swedish is what I need!!

To help me learn Swedish I have started listening and following along in the book, to Harry Potter! I have read the book so many times that I know the story well and can understand a fair bit of what is going on but it is till mighty confusing. I got about 11 pages in and had to stop and go to bed because I was so sleepy after concentrating on what was going on. It was also about 9 at night.  

I have set the dead line with my family that there will be no more English in the house after Christmas. I plan to sick to this very much!  

    

 

Hey! Who turned out the lights?!

The other day I walked out of school at 5.00pm after my English class. The last time I did this, about two weeks ago, it was light outside. This time it was pitch black.

Today it got dark at 4.00pm.

The sun started going down at about 2.30pm.

I don’t even think the sun got all the way up before it packed it in and started going down. Lazy sun!!

It is so strange coming out of school when it is dark outside and then going to football practice. I get home and think it is about 11.00pm when it is really only about 7.00pm.

The feeling of pure tiredness that comes with the dark comes so much earlier and I feel so tried all the time. It is also so much harder to get yourself up and going when it is dark outside at this time. It takes so much more will power not to just curl up in bed at 4.30pm and go to bed, like I did today! (Opps!)

Soon it will only be light from about 10am till about 2pm or an even shorter amount of time! Most of the time I will be in school for the light hours!

I have been told that the snow helps make it lighter but for the month of November there is little to no snow and dark days and the weather is always raining and the temperature is always dropping! Got to love November!! All I can say is that I am with the swedes when they say bring on the snow!!  

 

Horses and Graveyards

Today I tried something very new. I went horse riding with my host family and a family friend. I have never really been interested in going horse riding, but when they asked if I would like to go and try it out, I said yes! So we took the drive to a place about an hour and a half away from Stockholm to ride a special type of horse from Iceland called Icelandic Horses. These horses are smaller than normal horses and are meant to be easier to ride for beginners like me! This however was not the case with me. I had, what I thought was a lovely horse, to ride for the trip. So I jumped on my horse in a rather uncoordinated fashion, and the horse started walking! Coming from a person how has never ever been horse riding before and did not know how to control the horse, this was rather scary. The family friend that came with us new how to ride horses and taught me how to stop and start my horse and make it go where I wanted it to go, the only problem was that her horse and mine were not the best of friends so my horse tried to kick hers with her back legs. This freaked the living day lights out of me! I was in no mood to fall off this horse or any other horse for that matter! We carried on walking and headed to the forest. This is when my horse went crazy. We had to go through a puddle of water. My horse didn’t like this puddle of water. She liked the trees next to the puddle of water. She went for the trees taking me with her right into the trees in a crazy run and she wouldn’t listen to me to not. I freaked. It really scared me that it wouldn’t listen to me and that it kept trying to go off on its own. In the end my host brother John switched horses with me. His horse was nice and just plodded along which was a nice change and I could relax. John, who had ridden before, found it a bit easier to control my horse but she still wasn’t happy! Overall it was good to try horse riding but whether I do it again is still very much up in the air!

 

 

My crazy horse!



 

 

Aron's (my host brother) horse.

On the first weekend of November in Sweden there is a tradition that you will go to a graveyard a light a candle for the love ones you have lost. Whether it is on the person’s grave or in a spot to remember all you can light your candle and remember. On Saturday night my host family and I went to Stockholm’s biggest graveyard and lit our candles. I put one down for Grandma and Granda. It was such a lovely way to remember. The whole graveyard glowed with candle light and every so often you would see a lantern being let into the air. It is such a simple thing to do. I loved the fact that it made a place that would be a scary place to be in pitch black darkness into a place of such simple beauty.

 

The four candles my host family and I lit. the one at the front is mine for Grandma and Granda.

 

 

The candles in the graveyard from the hop of a hill.

 

 

Candles in a tree.

 

 

A place to leave candles if your loved ones are not in this graveyard covered in candles.