Swedish Time!

Swedish has been in my life on a daily basis for a long time. Not the language—the genetic material.

Brandt. Husband.

My husband, Brandt, is of Swedish descent. He looks it, no?

Swedish is a North Germanic language, as are Danish and Norwegian. I have read that there is mutual intelligibility with Norwegian and, to a lesser degree, with Danish.

I have been wanting to study Swedish for ages. I want to go to Sweden.

I haven’t been to Sweden since I was one year old, and I can’t say I remember much of that trip.

Since every Swedish person I meet speaks English, I don’t anticipate a lot of practical use for this language, but I love the letter å, and being able to write words and sentences with that in them would be very exciting. 

I have been scouting around for materials. So far I have acquired Routledge’s enormous Swedish: A Comprehensive Grammar, Glossika’s Swedish Fluency Package, and 30 lessons of Pimsleur.

I have four other books on the way. Pictures of those to come, but here is what I have on my shelves at this point.

Routledge: A Swedish Heavyweight

My First Glossika Adventure!

In addition, I am already losing my mind with joy over Memrise’s many, many Swedish vocabulary courses. I was still awake doing one at 4:30 a.m. the other day, which is really terrible from a health perspective and something I should knock off immediately.

But here’s what I am noticing: the content on Memrise is so robust for Swedish, and the Germanic nature of the language renders it familiar enough to me, that I am actually making quite good progress with Memrise. Many of the units have audio, and I am completely, totally grooving on a verb course that is teaching me numerous present-tense conjugations along with their pronunciation. It is heaven and feels much more efficient than doing a grammar exercise and then checking the answers in the back of a book.

I don’t know that you can get to the course without signing up for Memrise first, but click here if you want to try it. It’s free!

Swedish pronunciation is stocked with surprises, by the way. I look at a word on the screen. I hear it. I am shocked. Repeatedly.

Jag is “I” in Swedish. Now guess how to pronounce it.

Now listen to the first link here.

Eek.