Added: 12/15/2005 |
The road to a Swede's heart lies through Swedish learningSwedish is a fascinating and expressive language. It is also a melodic language, admittedly difficult to pronounce like a native because of its characteristic sing-song rhythm, but otherwise not more complicated to learn than English.
Most Swedes born after World War II do speak or understand English - many of them very well, actually - and you will probably be able to have a memorable and enjoyable stay in Sweden without any deeper knowledge of Swedish. But you will find that just a few words of Swedish will work as a wonderful door-key to the Swedes, who have a reputation of being rather reserved to strangers. Addressing someone in his or her native language is a matter of respect, a way of showing that you play by their rules, so to speak.
To learn a language means to learn to understand the culture where it is spoken and the people who speak it. In a way, Swedish learning opens up a new world.
Swedish is a member of the Indo-European family, to which almost all European languages belong (with the exception of the Finnish-Ugrian, Basque, and Caucasian languages), and has many features in common with all of these. Its closest relatives are Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. The latter has due to its isolation remained remarkably intact from the Viking Age and therefore is very difficult to understand for other Nordic speakers.
Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes usually do not have any difficulties in communicating with each other. Even though Danish is slightly more closely related to Swedish than Norwegian, its "hot-potato-in-the-mouth" pronunciation is the main obstacle when Danes and Swedes speak with each other, whereas Norwegian in that respect is very similar to Swedish.
There is no natural language which does not require years of study to master it completely, but you will soon acquire an impressive passive vocabulary with basic Swedish learning. You will find that signs and headlines become more and more comprehensible and that you within a short time will be able to browse through a Swedish newspaper and get a good grasp of what is said.
Swedish learning is facilitated by the fact that over the centuries it has borrowed thousands of words from Low German, French, and English; some very common words in English have in turn been borrowed from the Vikings. This means that many words will be familiar to you from the very beginning.
A language is more than just a collection of words and without a basic knowledge of the grammar, your linguistic proficiency will most likely be very limited.
The purpose of Swedish learning software, online courses and other introduction methods is to enable you to start your study of the Swedish reading and practising Swedish on your own, with the help of a good dictionary. Many of these courses present a brief outline of Swedish grammar, with the emphasis on the spoken, everyday language, and includes speech samples. The words selected are, with few exceptions, among the most frequent in the Swedish language. No previous knowledge of grammar is required.
It is advisable to browse through the rules for pronunciation. Otherwise you might end up sounding disquietingly like the Swedish Chef in the Muppet Show.
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