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???