Självklart finns det några som lär sig svenska här! Hur går pluggandet??
How’s your Swedish studies going?? Are you stuck on anything?
I still have problems with “bisats” (dependant clauses I think they’re called in English) and word nuance and things, myself. My spelling is horrible and I mix up strong and weak verbs, ex. “stickade” (knitted) instead of “stack” (injected, as in a needle). But, even though I live in Sweden I actually go 95% of the day without using Swedish so it’s just to be expected.
I’m afraid it’s getting worse every day. There is no need in using Swedish for me and I have to force myself to use it. I try to read a book every few weeks and I’m listening to SR from time to time to keep my B1-ish level upright. Men jag borde praktisera mycket mer.
I am learning Swedish in Germany and my fellow learners and teacher are all native Germans. Our teacher speaks Swedish pretty well - it sounds authentic to me, at least - but she hardly ever corrects us!!!
I am not so sure that attending a group like this is actually of any use, to be honest. Have any of you tried doing a language exchange thing? Doing one-to-one with native speakers of Swedish?
I would love to do this, but haven’t tried it yet.
Ja. I was looking for a tandem-partner for quite a while. But I didn’t find a Swede who really wanted to learn German. I only met some “it would be cool to polish up my lousy German skills”-type of guys and therefore conversations didn’t last very long. They weren’t really interested in learning the language.
There’s a Swedish penpal website afaik, but I never tried it out.
My exchange partner where mostly from italki.com or interpals.com
You have to pay on italki if you want to take the lessons of one of the teachers, but interacting with the community is for free (it’s even a good way to let native speakers correct your own texts).
interpals should be completle free, but there’s much more spam in your private messages and it’s not exclusively used for language learning.
I never really took Swedish classes and didn’t learn from books, I just learned mostly by listening (which is why I still make certain mistakes and have a low vocabulary)… I did take a Swedish for Foreigners class here in Sweden but I was too advanced for it from the beginning, as the level was really low.
My advice is, somehow find a Swede who likes the same things as you and try to talk to them… For me personally, being language partners never works out as we have nothing in common to talk about and the “friendship” always ends up dying. I just go on sites like Tumblr and LiveJournal, and message Swedes in Swedish when I see them. But, because I’m lazy, we always end up switching to English and then I never practise my Swedish.
When you have no one to talk to, you can at least watch a lot of things on SVTplay haha! I usually only watch documentaries — the ones about Chinese food are good, I also watch a lot of nature documentaries but more than half of those are translated from other languages.
To be honest, most Swedes have really low “self-esteem” about their own culture and language (they think it’s stupid, boring, worthless etc), and many people still think that the internet is “for English”. So it can be difficult to get them to write/speak Swedish to you online, if they’re not interested in languages themselves. A lot of them don’t even make it clear anywhere that they’re Swedes. My wife is Swedish and often still finds Swedes who only want to write to her in English : /
Yes, but I get very soon tired about the “…kan bara ses i Sverige” screen. And I’m a little bit picky when it is about TV program. I also switch sometimes to ur.se to watch a documentary.
My yearly highlight is “julkalendern” and in the early days of my learning expierience I loved to watch “App-TV med Zillah och Totte”. But I’m afraid Zilla och Totte are not available anymore and I didn’t watch the julkalendern in 2014. Pirates and christmas? - come on!
I have a strong feeling that you speak English to her the most time too
Ah, my wife’s parents are abusive to us so it’s developed into a situation where we speak English when they’re around and Swedish when they’ve been away (on holiday) for a while, as a sort of slight barrier to them… It became a habit that probably won’t be broken until we get jobs and get to move out of here. My university classes are taught in English and I don’t have any friends in this town either (classes are via the internet, and no money = can’t go out = people naturally drop contact with you), otherwise the type of language might carry over into the rest of my time, but alas!
This course has been a huge help to my progress. I’ve been studying Swedish off and on for a few years now but most of that time has been spent not really knowing what to do. The Duolingo course was amazing for getting me started, but after that I was pretty much lost and had been kind of floundering for awhile.
I’ve paid for tutoring on italki and consider it well worth the cost. It was pretty amazing to end up spending an entire hour speaking nothing but Swedish after a surprisingly few number of sessions. Now, I did have to look up a lot of words through Google Translate, and the teacher was speaking slowly for me and being understanding of my mistakes, so it isn’t like I was some sudden Swedish superstar, but that kind of interaction feels pretty essential to making real progress. I’ve since developed a friendship with a community member and we trade help with each other’s language.
Lately, I’ve been focusing on two main techniques: studying through Memrise and reading. I bought copies of The Hunger Games Trilogy through Google Play Books in both Swedish and English and alternate between them, chapter by chapter. It’s really cool to come across words I’ve just seen on the Memrise course show up in those books. It’s really essential to see the words in context to completely understand them.
Oh, I’m also listening to Swedish audiobooks. I find they hold my attention better than podcasts (plus the narrator talks more slowly). I use Mofibo because it’s the only service I could get where I live. Storytel has a bigger selection of books. Both services have audio and ebooks.
I feel pretty confident that I’ll be moderately fluent by the end of the year and be able to hold my own in normal conversations. I’ll still have a long ways to go to master Swedish, but at least I’ll be able to use it.
I am learning Swedish in Germany. I started at the “Volkshochschule” (adult evening class) some years ago. At the first meeting there were about 40 people. After 2 years there were only 6 people left. Then we started to learn in a privat group.
Our teacher was a funny Swedish man. He has been a teacher in Sweden Then he became a missionary and travelled round the world. And he speaks many languages. So he told a lot of stories. Also often in German or English!
Unfortunately, he has no time anymore. He has to teach the refugees German.
So I’m learning here.
( hope my English is understandable)
I live in a part of Germany where many people speak Plattdeutsch. This is more simular to english and swedish. Because long ago they were all sailars or pirates. (joke)
@ Hydroptere,
yes, Dutch I forgot! The ancient mariners. It’s very close. I live near the Dutch border. Many Dutch people come here to do their shopping. There are no communication problems.
This site is amazing. I learnt a lot of swedish just following a bunch of selected courses! I tried other applications too but i think this is the best method for me. I’m lucky to be able to talk with a couple of swedish people but nothing more than a couple of sentences. And this is what i really miss now: being able to create more complex sentences. Some verbs lack their preposition, some adverbs lack context etc…
But I’m hopeful! I’m really liking it
Chech out a website called Clozemaster.
It is helping me with my German and there is a Swedish course also. It is a shame that it isn’t structured as the German one, devided into sections by word frequency.
I will continue my Swedish course if I will be satisfied with my vocabulary. It’s great for learning words in context!
My Swedish learning is going fine, but I’m still using the Duolingo (and it’s respective Memrise course). Some of the word order is really weird, but otherwise, this is the language I’ve had the most success with.
hey,what’s up?
actually i saw that you made a course on memrise called ‘tisus prep" and i was wondering if it’s ok to ask you some questions about that.
some of my friends and i are looking hardly for complete or sufficient online courses or materials to pass the test and yet we almost got nothing,and i saw that you knida’ mentioned that there are some online resources or websites to use in order to prepare for the test!
i wanted to know if you have taken the test before or have any personal experience on the subject or any other materials that could be easily found on the internet or any thing else that would help me and my friends to pass the test without that much trouble !?
thanks!
That is, you can’t tell what’s the best proxy to use in this situation? Unfortunately, i cant access the site from my country without changing ip to some fake.
The ancient mariners. It’s very close. I live near the Dutch border. Many Dutch people come here to do their shopping. There are no communication problems.
