Why Swedish - Part 2

It´s been a while since I wrote a post here and so many things have happened in the meantime...

The last half a year has been mostly about hard work and little sleep, less partying more studying, but I can now proudly say that it was worth it:
    in Jan I had my Swedish level B2 Swedex Test and last month level C1 Tisus Test which I passed in reading and writing. Yeeey! How cool is that?! :-)
 In case you´re not European, here is the link to the European framework for languages

I have 1000 new projects on my mind, but the next big step now is moving to Sweden.
I´ve been dreaming about this for such a long time and now, being less then three months away from fulfilling my dream kind of scares me. Of course I am sure this is what I want, it´s just that I´m worried about the little things related to any new start in life: new home, new friends, new job... and on top of all going to school again. It´s a mixed feeling of a lot of excitement and a bit of worry. But it is not like it´s the first time I´m going through this, so I guess I´m worrying over nothing, right?!

Since I wrote the first part of my "Why Swedish" post before ever being in Sweden, I think I can somehow rewrite the story from a totally new perspective now. It´s like "before" and "after" going to Sweden.

If you didn´t read the first part yet, now it´s the time: http://whyswedish.blogspot.ch/2011/10/why-swedish.html


Well, before going there I only knew whatever I had read in books and heard on the radio.
I knew Swedes are tall, blond and good-looking people who enjoy quiet moments, good coffee and sweets, (loads of sweets!!!). I knew that Sweden is one of the best countries when it comes to equality between men and women (at least I was really hoping to be that way), I knew people are pretty equal in general, that they usually don´t like to show off or be different in any way, that they by all means avoid conflicts, that they rarely make new friends and that as a foreigner it is quite difficult to enter their circle. I had, of course, read about the high taxes and the high alcohol prices, the high rate of immigration, the good health care system, high standard free education and so on.
But before going there it was difficult to imagine how all of that can actually work together in a harmonious way.

Sergels Torg - nov 2011

My first trip to Stockholm was probably in the worst time of the year: end of November.
It was cold and dark (daylight only till about 2-3 pm) - not many tall and blond people on the streets.
But for me it was magical. The light from the candles in the windows of cafés and the Christmas street lightning made the cold feel less cold and the dark felt just cozy and nice.

Kanelbulle & coffee @ Akademibokhandel

In the week I was there I met great people I am still in contact with,  went to museums, got on top of Globen to see the amazing view of Stockhom from above, went to concerts and did what any girl would do alone in a new city: shopping!!
But my favorite thing of all was to find a cozy café, take a big cup of steamy coffee and a kanelbulle and sit there for a while and observe people; the way they talk, how they are dressed (Swedes are btw very stylish), they way they interact with each other and all of those little gestures. 


In my mind I had already decided then and there that I want to move to Sweden. I think I knew it even before the trip, but after that week in Sthlm I was sure that this is what I wanted to do. It just felt "home" somehow, I felt like it was a place where I could be myself. 
It´s funny, I thought many times about this: how can it be, to be born in a place and not be able to identify yourself too much with the culture of your country. I´m basically a mix of latin and balcanic blood, but I don´t feel like I have many of the characteristics defining my people. I love Romania because it´s the place I grew up in, I have a part of my family and a lost of friends there, but I honestly don´t think I would ever move back.
Is Sweden the country I will end up living the rest of my life in? I don´t know. Maybe, who knows...

Stort Tack !

Of course I could not have come so far with my Swedish without the help of crazy and wonderful people who supported me along the way. I feel like I have to thank them in a way or another, so even if I don´t get to do this personally...
here we go:

A big big hug & stort tack till Ann. You had the patience to listen to my terrible pronunciation and to correct all my grammar mistakes... it has been of really great help. You were the first one I felt confident enough to actually speak Swedish to and thanks to you I improved as quickly as I did!

Tack till Claudio. You went through the same thing I did with learning Swedish and you were somehow the living proof that it is possible to learn it! Thanks for all the good music and movies.

Big big hug to my friends Flavia and Corina. I feel so happy to have you beside me. Thanks for understanding and supporting me even in my craziest moments. You rock!! :-)
Lots of hugs and thank you to Vanessa (muchissimas gracias amiguis!) to Shrikant (miss youuuuu so much!) and to my dear friend Indro. Thanks!! :-)

And very important to me: lots of love to my Mom & Sorin and to Mara - the best sister in the world. Thanks guys, I know I can be impossible sometimes and I am so grateful that you understand me and support me no matter what. I´m really luck to have you in my life! <3

And the list can continue: thank you to: Erik, Verena, Dan, Tiina, Sheena, Margaret, Tina... I´m sure I forgot some people (sorry for that).. anyway thank you all so much!!

Study in the country of "lagom"

Have you ever thought of leaving your country, your comfortable day to day life where you know everything and everybody and just start new somewhere else?

A friend of mine posted this on facebook a few days ago - Top five regrets of the dying:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038


And the first one on the list was:

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me"

Do we really want to grow old thinking "oh, I really wish I did that when I was younger... now it´s too late..". 
You know what, it´s never too late!

Of course the most common time to go to the university and study is after you graduated from high school and - yeah - it is what society expects us to do. But what if you didn´t want to do it back then or if you did it but being too young and not understanding what you wanted in life, made the wrong decision?! 
Are you supposed to have the same job for the rest of your life just because big changes don´t look good on you resume? Should you live your life the way others expect you to and end up miserable?   

This post is about BIG changes

About starting new


About having the courage to leave everything behind... 

Is it hard? YES, for sure. 

Is it worth it? Hmm... I don´t know. I guess you never know unless you try... and this is where the fun begins.

This is about leaving Switzerland and starting once again new in the country of my dreams... Sweden.

(to be continued)

How I learned Swedish

There are many useful tools for learning languages and luckily most of them are available online - free!
All you need to do is sacrifice some of your time as often as you can and stay focused and motivated.



Here is how I did it:


Step 1

• Livemocha.com

perfect free learning tool for absolute beginners

Each lesson contains
- 40 new spoken and written words or sentences
- exercises:  review - write - speak (you can submit you exercises and get feedback from native speakers)

Besides, very good networking platform - get in touch with
- people learning the same language you do
- native speakers

! You need to create an account.

• Go Swedish on youtube  

A 25 year old Swedish girl with the sweetest voice you´ve ever heard, created a series of pretty good lessons for beginners. She repeats each word and sentence several times in normal speed and slowly. Very good to understand Swedish pronunciation.
The lessons are so much fun! In the beginning I listened to each one at least 20 times.. you must think I´m crazy, but in my mother tongue they say that "the repetition is the mother of knowledge".

! She also has an app for iPhone which is called Go Swedish Love Edition <3

•  Teach yourself Swedish book 

    There are plenty of good books to teach yourself Swedish. I chose one randomly, in a bookstore in Zürich and I was pretty pleased with the results.

This book, for example, has one text about Swedish culture, Sweden & swedes at the end of each chapter. Very nice!

! Important in my opinion: make sure that at the end of each lesson / dialog, there is a list of the new words with translation in your mother tongue. You don´t want to waist your time having to look them up in a dictionary.





OK! After a few weeks of doing all the above, you should be able to understand some words in Swedish.
Yeee! Finally some results. :-)
It´s time to start enjoying and learn half of the time passively - next Step!

Step 2

• listen to Swedish radio online 

RixFM (latest hits & talk shows) my favorite is the morning show: Rix MorronZoo
Bandit Rock (really good rock & metal music, not so many talk shows though)
Lugna Favoriter  (relaxing soft music) I almost never listen to this one
Radio 1 (talk shown & news only) very interesting shows, as soon as you start understanding a bit

Radio P1, P2, P3, P4 (mainly talk shows & news) on P3 you can listen to some music too.

Try them all and see which one you prefer.

! You can also find iPhone application for all these radios

•  watch online TV channels

Unless you live in Sweden and you can watch them all on tv, watching shows online is a good alternative.

great variety of shows, all from sports till news, talk shows and even kids shows (pretty useful to get you started)


Two of my personal favorites:

Gomorron Sverige (morning news / talk show)

Skavlan (entertainment talk show - the moderator is Norwegian, so there are subtitles every time he talks)

                                            
! On SvtPlay there is no advertisement before the show starts. Great!



 
nice "light" shows




Halv åtta hos mig (light entertainment, I watch this sometimes after work, when I´m too tired to focus on more serious stuff).

! Very useful: there are always subtitles, although the show is completely in Swedish.

• listen to Swedish music

You´ve probably heard that Swedes are pretty talented musicians, but there´s a lot more to discover besides ABBA, Roxette or The Cranberries.

Depending on the style you prefer, there is plenty of music on youtube to choose from.

! My tip: try to find youtube videos with lyrics

Not directly my style, but here is some music with pretty clear and easy to understand lyrics:

       

 http://www.oskarlinnros.se/

    

  http://www.danieladamsray.com/ 

 

http://www.septembermusic.se/

     

http://www.veronicamaggio.se/ 

• read online newspapers

Svenska Dagbladet

Aftonbladet

! You can also find iPhone application for all these newspapers

Step 3

• Find a language exchange partner 

 You can always find people interested in learning your language, or one of the languages you´re able to speak fluently. Post a short ad on one of the socializing online platforms in your town. 

I found my language exchange partner this way. Actually she found me. She was looking for someone to help her with her German and she could offer instead Swedish or English.

We met for a coffee 6 months ago and we are meeting weekly ever since. Usually 2 hours - we speak Swedish one hour and German the other one. It helps a lot!

This is a great way to start using what you´ve been learning. You can work on your pronunciation, learn to talk about yourself, what you did over the weekend, about plans for the holiday, etc. 

And best of all, if your exchange partner is a native speaker, you can learn some slang too. You don´t really find slang words in books.

So far so good! By now you should definitely be ready for the next step. Oh, just to let you know, I got to this point after about 6 months, it didn´t happen over night. ;-)

Step 4

• Read a book in Swedish

Of course you will no understand everything, but don´t worry. The more you read, the better you get. There´s hope!

So, in order to make this process easier, try to do what I did:
      Think of a novel you read recently in your mother tongue and you liked so much that you could read it again. Look it up online and check if there is a Swedish translation of the same novel.
Buy the book - see if there´s a Swedish audio book as well.


In my case, I had read Stieg Larsson´s - Verblendung, two years ago. It was by far the most thrilling novel I have ever read.


As you probably know, there is a movie made after this book. I bought the movie and watched it in German once, then watched it several times in Swedish.

I asked a Swedish friend to bring me the book and audio book from one of his trips home.
What I did was:
                 - listen several times to the first chapter
                 - then try to read it
(whenever I couldn´t understand a whole phrase, I checked it in the German book - the translation is really good)

While reading the first chapters I almost gave up. I read several other books in German in between, because I had really lost my patience. It was just so difficult to enjoy it.

I´m wondering now if it would have been easier to start with some short stories before going for a novel of over 500 pages.

Anyway, it worked pretty well eventually. The last two chapters were so easy to read and so enjoyable, that now I can honestly say it was worth the "pain".



Can´t really say where I stand right now with my Swedish. I think somewhere between level A2 and B1. Getting fluent is a matter of time, more hard work and listening to a lot of Swedish daily. 
I guess living in Sweden would help a lot. So, if you are lucky enough to already be there, enjoy this privilege and do your best!

Why Swedish?

People can have various reasons when they decide to start learning a language.

Most of the time you either need it for career advancement or travel, or you learn it even just for fun. And if the language you´re learning is not a common one like English or French, you might be often asked "why?".

I am part of a big expat community in Zürich, Switzerland and I am meeting new people every week. After the typical questions like "Where are you from?", "Have you been here for long?" or "What do you do?", you usually start talking about the life in Zürich, free time activities, hobbies, etc. People here are very much into outdoor activities, - Switzerland has beautiful landscape - so if you ask anyone during the winter about how they spent their weekend, they will most likely tell you they´ve been out skiing.

Well, in my case the answer would be "I´ve been home, learning Swedish". And here´s where the big question comes: "WHY Swedish?"

So, how do I explain why I spend so much of my time learning a language I might never use anywhere else but in Sweden?

Because I like it? Why do I like it? And why Swedish and not another language?

It happens very often that I try to explain why and I never have the feeling that anyone actually understands this.

If one person doesn´t understand you, it´s her/his problem. But if nobody understands, the problem might be on your side.

This is the reason why I decided to write a blog about learning Swedish, how I started and why after one year I am still very motivated, although I haven´t been to Sweden yet. So the next time someone asks me: "Why are you learning Swedish?" I will just say: "Read my blog" :-D

It all probably started back in my childhood, when instead of watching cartoons, I had to watch MTV at the only tv in the house, with my 5 years elder sister. I grew up with bands like Guns´n´Roses, Def Leppard, Metallica and even as I was older I kept on preferring rock music.

Later, internet made everything a lot easier. You could listen to new bands, read their lyrics, see where the members come from. Soon I discovered that most of the rock / metal groups I was listening to, came from Scandinavia. As music is a big part of every teenager´s life, I started developing a sort of fascination for the countries my favorite bands came from and thought that "when I grow up" I would like to live there.

There wasn´t anything specific about Sweden back then.

End of 2009, I decided to go abroad as an au pair. Of course a Scandinavian country would have been my first choice, but for multiple reasons which I will not mention here, I ended up in Switzerland. After a very short time of living here I knew that, if it all works well, I might stay here for good - I´m sure most of the expats in Zürich share the same feeling.

I had the chance to meet some very nice people and one of them recommended I should start reading in German in order to improve my language skills. She had a lot of books home, mostly Scandinavian crime novels, as she came from Scandinavia herself, from Denmark.

One of the first books I read in German was Stieg Larsson´s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Verblendung - germ.). For those who haven´t read it yet, the action takes place in Stockholm, Sweden. I tried also reading novels written by authors from other countries, but there was something about the Scandinavian style that made me want to read more. It happened a few times that I forgot to get off at the right bus stop because I was too focused on my reading.

As my fascination for Scandinavia was growing, in October 2010 - exactly one year ago - I decided to go to a Swedish party. I remember, it was on a Thursday evening. I had read about it on an expat internet platform a few days before and I was already getting excited to meeting some Scandinavian people. I only met one, but it seems to have been enough. I spent the whole evening talking to Erik from Stockholm. I told him about all the cool things I knew about Scandinavia and how I was thinking of starting to learn one of the Scandinavian languages. Of course, he advised me to learn Swedish.. which is actually normal - if someone would come to me and say they´re thinking of learning an eastern-European language, I would say, learn Romanian!

We had brunch together a few days later, and that´s when I learned my first words in Swedish:
"Jag vill ha en öl." Erik thought it would be useful, if I go to Sweden, to be able to ask for a beer.

I realized how many similarities there are between German and Swedish, so I decided right then that it shouldn´t be that difficult for me to learn Swedish.

And here I am today, after one year, reading the last 10 pages of the same Stieg Larsson novel - this time in Swedish - Män som hatar kvinnor (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) ...

I really tried to compress the story as much as I could without leaving the important details aside. If you got to this last line, it means you had the patience to read the whole story. Do you understand now why???