Reading between the lines

The recent cinema release of the Americanised (why can't they just leave stuff alone ?) version of one of the Stieg Larsson Millennium series books has spurred me into action. About a year ago I bought the set in a local second hand book store. I decided that I was going to start reading Swedish books like a real Swedish person, instead of weaseling my way through with books I had nicked from the childrens section of the public library in order to scrape my way through the Swedish language course requirements. So I had been wandering through the first book when I had the time and the motivation. 700 pages does take a bit of motivation when my attention and concentration maxes out at around 10 pages per session. I had probably read about half of it over a 6 month period. But now it's all hands to the pumps and I'm breaking into the final hundred pages. After all this effort there's no way in hell I'm going to see the movie until I've finished the book.

One of the things I've discovered is my newly acquired ability to quickly detect the writing habits and styles of authors. When the text is in Swedish. In a way that I have never done in English. I guess I'm focusing more on the text these days, instead of simply digesting the content, because the language is still very new to me. If I had to write about the writing style of William Shakespeare, I wouldn't have a clue really. I'd probably end up prowling around in Wikipedia looking for the answers. But I can tell you that, after 600 painstaking pages, I know all of Stieg's favourite words, phrases, sentence structures, and grammatical quirks. I had also read a Marianne Fredriksson book (a very unique and kick arse author who I thoroughly recommend) and found the same thing. Although I never consciously thought about it before now. I don't know that I could do it in English, mind. And I wonder if the average native Swedish speaker could do the same so easily when reading a Swedish book ? Maybe this is one of the few perks of learning a new language.

Another 10 pages tonight and I might almost be finished before the film ends up being sold in the bargains bin at the local video store.

Svenska timeline

Having recently finally completed the excellent (and FREE) government Swedish language programme (the official certificates arrived yesterday) I thought it might be worthwhile giving a sumamry of the task. As I found it to be.

We arrived here in late August 2008. Like 99% of immigrants I was dead certain that I'd pick up the lingo just like that, and that language classes were for other people who weren't nearly as clever as me. That fantasy lasted all of about 3 weeks and I started full time at SFI school in mid September. I was applying for work at the same time, and was lucky enough to be taken onboard in December by an extremely understanding employer. I guess they knew that I wasn't really in a position to be bargaining with them and that, once I had the language sorted out, I'd already be established with them. Either that or they figured I might be a good source of entertainment. Whatever the reason, they had a requirement that I successfully complete the SFI programme. Naturally I couldn't do that during the days, so I switched to night classes, which went for 2 hours, twice a week.

I started back with SFI in late January of 2009, this time at evening classes, and in the town where I was working. I took that option as I figured it would be easier rather than commuting back to my home town and going to school there. In hindsight it was a mistake, as the second school used a totally different set of course material than was used at my first school. Which essentially meant I had to start from scratch again with the required assignments. One would have thought it would have been standardised throughout the country, but that was not the case. So it slowed me down a lot, as obviously did the reduced classroom hours. It wasn't until February 2010 that I took and passed the final exams for the SFI programme.

All up, SFI took me about 13 months of actual class time. My colleagues who had stayed with the fulltime day classes completed the course in about 6 months.

That satisfied my employment requirements. I could have stopped there. I was tempted to. My co-worker took the SFI exam at the same time as me, and she decided not to go any further. But then, Swedish wasn't the first "extra" language she had learnt and she seemed to have the knack which I didn't. But here's the thing. Knowing that there was an additional path, and knowing I had the choice to take it and didn't, when other people had, just didn't sit right. I would always have felt like I'd taken the soft option. Other immigrants had toughed it out, maybe I wasn't quite as good as I thought I was. It would eat away at me if I didn't at least try.

The other motivating factor was to try and wrestle back some control over my life. Not mastering the language as quickly as I thought I would had hit me hard. I felt like I wasn't in control of where I was. After 40+ years of knowing everything and being able to decide when and how I did things, this was really tough. Now I was limited in what things I could or couldn't do. It was no longer me who was deciding. And that couldn't be acceptable. I needed a higher level of language skill in order to regain the control. For me, personally. So I decided to continue with the programme.

The next phase after SFI was SAS Grund. This is a big jump from SFI. More literature based and a lot more demanding with grammar. Really interesting though and my first exposure to the more well known Swedish authors. I also started learning about different types of Swedish language from different eras. Quite a lot of fun. SAS Grund didn't have a completion exam. Not at my night school at least. At the end of the summer holidays in 2010, after 4 months of SAS Grund, the teaching staff decided that I was ready to move forward into the Svenska A/B programme group.

Svenska A and B are rated as being at Swedish high school level. Supposedly. Seemed a bit short to me. But that's the theory. The course material is pretty much the same for both A and B, with the difference being the level of marking. B was pretty tough for me. With A/B there was no formal grammar lessons or testing. The tasks consisted of completing a number (about 10 for each) of written essay assignments based around Swedish history and literature. Grammatical weaknesses or faults were picked up and addresed during the marking of the assignments.

SFI taught the basics of the language with generally one word to describe an object. A cat was a cat. With Svenska A/B came the introduction of synonyms and the challenge to use alternative words or phrases to suit a particular task or communcation style. At times we had to write formal reports, other times we were to write informal magazine type articles. A large part of the marking was allocated to being about to use the appropriate language and terminology to suit the genre and audience. I found that to be quite tough, but eventually got my head around it.

A pass in Svenska B allows for entry into a Swedish university. I can't see that I would ever want to go to university again, but the point was that I could if I wanted to. All about taking the control back again. Plus, I'd come this far and I'd be really pissed with myself if I'd sweated all for nothing.

Svenska B has external written and oral exams, just like SFI. As well as the assignment requirements. From what I understand, these exams are not compulsary in adult student schools. As luck would have it, my school had decided that they would impose the exams as a requirement. Which meant a bit more stress, but at least we could say that we hadn't taken any shortcuts. Svenska A and B combined took me a full calendar year to complete. Most of the work was self study so, even though I only went one evening a week, it's probably not a lot slower than the day classes. Certainly not like the difference in the SFI timescales.

So, all up, if one is working fulltime, the entire Swedish language programme takes about 3 years to complete. Studying fulltime probably knocks a bit more than a year off that time. But it's worth remembering that the point of the exercise is to learn Swedish. It's not to gain a certificate in the shortest possible amount of time. Language is something that takes as long as it takes. Having a piece of paper isn't suddenly going to give you fluency you never had a week earlier. This is a long term process to set you up for the rest of your life.

Svenska B, Conquering Mordor.

Well, it only took 2 years and 11 months. Only, he says. But I am now officially a graduate of the Swedish language programme. Svenska B is the final stage of the official language programme offered by the government for immigrants into Sweden. Supposedly it's at the same level as a graduating Swedish high school student. Must be some pretty dumb kids in Swedish high schools if their language skill is at the same level as mine. But, hey, I passed.

It was a real crash course this time. I completed Svenska A one week before the summer holidays and was given all the written assignment information for Svenska B prior to the holidays. The course had 6 written assignments to complete, 3 oral presentations, and one final written essay exam. The plan was that we would see how much work was able to be completed before the course shut down 3 weeks into the new term due to the teacher heading back to university. Then I could pick up the remaining work when the course started back up again in the new year.

The written assignments were pretty tough, I have to say. It was the same format as for Svenska A, but the marking criteria was much tougher, and I was forced to re-write every assignment after marking. I spent my holiday break doing all the research, reading frantically, and writing like the wind. Then I spent the first week back at school correcting all my mistakes. Luckily I had a wonderful teacher who was very proactive in marking work and getting them back to students.

The second week consisted of the oral exams. These involved 2 interview style discussions of around 15 minutes each about Swedish language history and about the development of language in people during various stages of their lives. Which was really interesting, but a lot to remember. Then there was a formal oral presentation to the class on a language topic which had to be submitted and approved in advance. That took quite a lot of time to sort out and rehearse.

The third and final week, with all my written assignments finally ticked off as being correct (or as good as they were likely to get), I sat the final external exam. Like SFI, there is one exam for all students throughout Sweden. For some reason it's not a requirement for students at adult schools, but my school had decided that they wanted all students to complete the same tasks as regular Swedish kids. Damn them and their mis-guided principles.

For the written exam we (there were 2 of us) were each given a reference book containing about 30 short articles on various language and cultural topics. There was more than one article covering a common theme, but they were from different angles. Then we were given a question booklet where we could choose from one of about 6 or 8 assignments. Each assignment gave a specific situation, such as writing for a teenage magazine, and a topic to be addressed. We had 5 hours to complete the assignment using the classromm computers.

As well as showing language skills (obviously), the main point of the exercise was to use language which was appropriate to the audience and the subject. That's a huge portion of the Svenska B content, learning alternative phrases and styles to describe the same things. Probably 50% of the marks went to having the appropriate approach to the situation.

With a lot of sweat I got through the formalities. It's then been a bit of a nervous wait to hear the final verdict on the combination of the assignments, vocal assessments, and written exam. But yesterday I got the call to say that I had officially passed with a VG grade. I think they were just as relieved to see the back of me as I was.

So that's that. Am I suddenly a native speaking Swede ? I wish. I guess that now the work starts. But it's kind of cool to know that I did achieve something Swedish. That doesn't happen very often for me.

Skriftlig Blues

Last night at language school we had to write an essay selected from a choice of language related themes. We had to write on the school computers and then save it on a USB stick for the teacher. Which was fair enough. Although, whatever happened to writing by hand, I'll never know. But anyway, for one of the few times in my life, I caught a break when I discovered that one of the topic choices was the same topic as I had used for my oral presentation the week before. It doesn't usually work like that. Typically we have to report on a set topic in a choice of writing styles. It can be as a straight report, and investigative angle, or as a debate. I often just start writing and then figure out, about half way through, which style my text is going to be best suited to. But last night was a bit more straight forward.

It went ok, I think. The verdict comes out next week. I was a bit disappointed to discover that access had been blocked to my ever trusty on-line Swedish-English dictionary, and to Google Translate. I must confess that I do use Google Translate quite a lot. Most often just to get me started. I can fire down thoughts in English, take the Swedish translations and use them to build my text around. Instead of having to start from scratch. Now, before anyone starts crying foul, I have to say, in my defence, that I seldom leave the Google Translate text in it's original copied form. Unless it's obvious that there's only one way to write something. Early on our teacher told us that she had seen some much Google Translate text that it was dead easy to spot. And she's right. I can spot it without too much effort when a Swede has used the same programme to translate back into English. It often is a bit too literal and just doesn't hang right. Knowing that she's on the hunt for any rogue translators, I take a bit of time to move the text around to a more sensible format and to add my own touches to it. But it does give a good start.

Not having access to an on-line Swedish-English dictionary was a bit un-necessary I thought. Especially when we had hard copies of translation dictionaries in front of us to use. But there must have been some reason for it. We also had a copy of Natur och Kulturs Stora Svenska Ordbok which is, in my opinion, one of the best books a person can have when studying Swedish. As well as being a dictionary it also shows all the different ways a word can be used, giving practical examples and normal expressions for each situation. A very handy book, and I refer to it a lot.

The main stumbling block last night, was actually our teacher. I guess she had nothing else to do while we were all writing, but could she not have found something better to do than to laugh every couple of minutes at comments on her friends' Facebook pages ? To be fair, she was kind enugh to read the comments out loud to us. So that we wouldn't feel left out. Didn't really help my efforts though. To show that she really was considerate, she announced after about 20 minutes that we were all going to stop for a coffee break. Which turned out to be a 45 minute natter session in the teachers' lounge. In the end I just got up and announced I was going back to the computer suite. No one else seemed to take the hint, included the teacher, so I was alone in the room for another 15 minutes. Which was probably the most productive period of the evening.

Speech Therapy

Last night at my language class we had to give an oral presentation. I hate these things. Mainly because my Swedish speaking skill level is by far my weakest point. As I guess it's always the last thing to master for most immigrants. I get so frustrated at not being about to get the message out in the way it exists inside my head. It's like having one arm permanently encased in plaster. Yeah, you can still do stuff, but you know that you used to be able to do it much better. Anyway, that's how it feels to me.

The theme was language and communication. Which was no great surprise given that it is a language class. We were free to take any approach we wanted, with the only requirement being that we had to include a couple of published works from a series of articles (about 30) in a book that we had been given. A few weeks ago one of my classmates gave a really good presentation on how the ability to communicate determines much of your personality and that, once that ability is compromised, your personality can alter. I hadn't thought about that before, but it rang true to me.

There were two of us who presented our topics last night. One guy spoke about the perceived importance of a name and how that importance can vary, depending on cultural or historical traditions. I found it to be really interesting and, like any good presentation, it opened the topic up for discussion at the end of the presentation.

For me, I took a less personal approach and chose a couple of articles that discussed the value and appropriate use of cliques. I enjoyed researching the subject and coming up with my own theories on the future direction of language evolution. It was fun.

The presentation itself wasn't so much fun. We have an "approximate" time limit, and I've always struggled with that in the past. So I spent a lot of time trimming as much fat out of my speech as I could, without losing too much structure. Which wasn't easy. On the other side, I know that I tend to talk fast when I'm nervous, and the clarity of my language starts to suffer. There's a fine line between Swenglish and just plain gibberish. As that's the entire point of the exercise, I was a bit worried about it, and kept forcing myself to slow down my speech the whole time. Which meant that I got pinged a couple of points for running over time. But I got through it.

With any luck that's the last time I'll have to give an oral presentation in class. There's a lot of things hanging up in the air at the moment as to whether or not the class is going to continue. I hope they find a solution because, as much as I hate it, I need the structured class too keep me focused solely on my new language. As a first time language student it's been a real battle. More than I could ever have imagined. And will be for a few years more. I know I've said it before but I'll always be grateful to the Swedish education system. This is not something I could ever have just "picked up" on my own. Without SFI classes to give me that base language grounding, I'm almost certain that I would be back in NZ today. I must send them a Thank You card some time.

Uttal -the follow up

A couple of weeks back I wrote about a vocal assessment we had in my Swedish language class. By "we", I mean myself and my equally semi-articulate Irish companion. This week we had a follow up session with the vocal tutor, together with an interesting discussion on the topic involving the entire class. Ok, there were only 4 of us who made it to class, but it was a good session just the same.

My results were about what I thought they would be. The majority of flaws picked up on were ones that I already knew as a weakness. The curse of the English language, as spoken in NZ, at least, is that it's relatively melody-less. Which puts it in direct conflict with the Swedish spoken language. It's mainly due to English generally not accentuating vowels. Particularly at the end of words, where the English trend is to fade quietly away.. Swedish, on the other hand, likes to celebrate every letter.

A couple of examples of what I mean:

Swedish: Lärare (teacher), English: Lärar.....

Swedish: Undrade (wondered), English: Undrad.....

Putting the stress on the right place in a word is the key to being understood. Even if your pronounciation isn't great, you'll most likely be understood if you've stressed the correct part of the word. That's the trick, and there's no easy solution for a lazy speaking Kiwi. It's a matter of drumming it into your head, time after time. That's where school is great, because there's someone who's sole purpose in life is to pull you up when you sound like a blithering twat.

As I said, getting the stress right is the key to being understood. Get it wrong (like me) and you be on the receiving end of blank stares and endless mocking.

Kliva  på bussen.... Climb aboard the bus

Kliva PÅ bussen... Literally climb on top of the bus.

There's a few rules of thumb when it comes to stressing a word. The most common is in identifying a long or short vowel sound. As a pretty good guide, if a vowel sits in front of 2 consonants then the vowel has a short sound (vitt) and it's the 2 consonants which get stressed. If there is only one consonant after the vowel (vit), then it's the vowel which has a long sound and is stressed. That doesn't hold 100% of the time, but it's a pretty good guide.

Generally a word will have either one or 2 stresses in it. No more than 2. Most often the stress will lie with the first vowel, or with the first group of consonants immediately after the first vowel. Longer words may have a second stresser, or the stress may be moved to the second half of the word. The words which follow this rule are often words that have been borrowed from other languages. Telefon is an example, as it's obviously not an original Swedish word. Sadly it's not always easy to know if a word was came to Swedish from English, or to English from Swedish.

The trap for young players is when you come across a word that is a combination of 2 or more words. The key for pronounciation here is to break that word up into it's original words and stress them that way. Without having a pause between the words. Sounds simple, right ? If only. Of course you can only do that if your vocabulary is large enough so that you can recognise that this new word is actually a combination of several smaller words that you've met before. So a bit of a double hit there.

I know this stuff, but it's not so easy remembering to put it into practice. Not after 40+ years of speaking one way. Many English speakers, and I fall into this group, don't move their mouth much when speaking. Which makes it difficult to stress words and letters. So as well as a mental learning curve, there's also a physical learning curve for me. Not just changing the language I speak in, but changing the way that I speak. There was nothing like that in the brochure.

Skakespeare in Swedish

Right now at Swedish language school (Yup, I'm still there) I'm working on a rather large topic regarding different forms of literature during the last 2000 years. For the moment it's just learning and reporting on the basics. While I'm presenting the work in Swedish, it's not really Sweden related.

Which takes me back to an earlier post. It's been my observation that the majority of Swedes are not terribly street smart when it comes to the practicalities of life outside of Sweden. They tend to come across as slightly confused, especially when there are not 15 different varieties of sausage to choose from, or when faced with a sandwich that has a slice of bread on the top. Quite happy tourists, just rather unsure and a little lost.

The other side of the situation is that most Swedes are very well educated in the outside world. In a theoretical manner. They know a lot about the history, geography, and current affairs of a great many countries which have little connection with Sweden. They seem to like learning about such things.

So here I am, sitting in a Swedish language class, being educated on the great English authors of the past 1,000 years. And I am embarassed to say that my Swedish language tutor knew far more about the topic than I did.

Looking back on the New Zealand education system, I am shocked to realise exactly how narrow a focus it had. We studied world events, and we studied literature. But only those events and works which had a direct bearing on NZ. 30 years later I can still recite extracts of "In Flanders Fields", and tell you the date of the signing of ANZUS treaty alliance (as much of a monumental mistake as that was). But I couldn't tell you where Portugal is. Or what language they speak in Belgium. There was an optional class in my final year of high school where one could learn about classic (non-NZ related) works of literature, but that was generally considered to be the domain of those who buttoned their school blazers on the wrong side.

Talking at school, and at home, the generally opinion seems to be the same. Swedes learn an aweful lot about the world outside of Sweden, but not so much about Sweden itself. A kind of parallel universe to the one I left behind. I'm not sure why that is. Possibly Swedes think it's a bit too boastful to be studying themselves. They can be a tad bashful. Or maybe they don't think that their country is important enough to study. I'm not suggesting that they know nothing about their own country, but the balance between national and international knowledge is rather strangely weighted. I enjoy watching the Swedish version of the TV game show "Are you smarter than a 10 years old?". Or whatever the correct name is. It's a great programme to help me with my language. Anyway, I see that the adults playing the game are way more comfortable with world history topics than they are with Swedish geography questions. Which gives strength to the conclusion.

Personally, I think they are missing out. Sweden is a very unique country, with so many special little quirks (not all of which are positive, admitedly) that it's a crime not to explore it in depth. Sweden holds a special place in world history, and has affected some many other countries along the way. Despite it's comparative isolation on the world stage. A few years ago there was an advertising campaign in New Zealand, in response to the large numbers of people emigrating to greener pastures. The catch phrase was simply "Don't Leave Town Till You've Seen The Country". Could be worth a try.

The language battle continues

Last night at Swedish class I had a session with a speech teacher. Poor woman. For some odd reason there was only myself and the other native English speaker (a good Irish pal of 2+ years) singled out for this. Not quite sure why that was. Must be desperate times if they've had to resort to calling in a hired gun. Anyway, the goal is to kick out our God aweful accents. Couldn't for the life of me understand this, as I'm pretty sure I don't have an accent, or brytning. Anyway, we had been given a set text of about 90 seconds long to read over the Easter break. I don't have the heart to tell the dedicated teaching staff, but I did run the text through Google Translate first. So I'd at least have a vauge notion about the sounds I was about to repeat. Then last night, we each sat in an office with the speech expert, and read the text for recording onto a computer. Presumably to end up on YouTube some time soon. Officially we wait for her to listen to our recordings, stop dying of laughter, and then come back to us with "tips" on how we can improve our spoken Swedish. I'm pretty sure that my Tip is going to be the suggestion that I consider taking up sign language. Will be interesting either way.

I'm enjoying this class, but it's certainly much tougher going. A lot more focus on obscure grammar which I had never studied for English, let alone Swedish. My vocabulary is slowly but surely increasing, and I'm making more of an effort to try out new words. Of course sometimes that means words that I've simply made up because they sound sort of Swedish. But it gets the message across. It's been quite difficult to increase my vocabulary beyond that initial learning burst, because I tend to be talking about the same things all the time at work or at home. So I'm pretty good when it comes to the parts of a horse, or how a building goes together. Not so good when it comes to remembering names for different foods. I'm going to have to be a lot more proactive with that battle. I'm quite pleased that I now know a few alternative words that mean roughly the same thing. So if I forget one, as I did last night, I can fire in a relacement which, although not quite meaning the same thing, gives me a bit of time to search back and come up with the correct term. Short term confusion for everyone, but it ends up being ok. Strengthening up my storage of synonyms is the current project for me in class. And that's kind of fun. Clearly I need to get out more.

Bird is the Word

In the Swedish language there are often a number of alternatives when conveying the same message. We really helps us struggling English speakers. One of these is when wanting to say the English word "you". In English this is pretty simple, and usually involves pointing at the offending party. Confusion can occur when addressing a group of people. Do you mean the whole group, or just one person in particular ? Sweden has fixed that problem by having a second word "ni" when addressing two or more people. Which I think is great, but as one usually learns the singular "du" first, it can be a struggle at first for a native English speaker to remember that there's a different word for multiple persons. Of course it wouldn't be Swedish without introducing yet another set of words for the same thing. Depending on whether or not you are referring to the subject of the conversation. "You are waiting for the bus" versus "The bus is waiting for you". But that's a story for another day. Moving along. Now, that's all well and good, but I found myself noticing people using the plural "ni" when it was plainly obvious that they were only referring to one person. I thought maybe it was just laziness although, to be honest, I like the sound of "ni" better than "du". So I did a bit of digging and came up with quite a story, that can only happen in Sweden. Those of us who are, or have been, fortunate enough to experience Swedish society have noticed that class structure is largely frowned upon. Unlike the English based cultures where class structure is required in order to keep the peasants under control. Sweden, too, thought this was a pretty good system. Until the country fell on hard times when those who had less either emigrated or died. As a result of the near decimation of their country, Sweden started taking active steps to narrow the economic and social gaps between people. And that included an overhaul of language. See, the Swedish word "Ni" was used in days gone by, when addressing a person of status. Someone who was a bit finer than your peasantly self. As part of the process of stripping away the class structure, a language reform was held (du-reformen). As only Swedes would do. And so it came to pass that all persons, regardless of wealth or position, would henceforth be referred to as "du". A crushing blow for the establishment, and one up for the masses. Not convinced that it actually changed anything, but I'm sure that the locals felt a bit better as a result. The use of the word Ni was to be limited to people who's status was without equal. Namely King and Mrs King. Så var det. Not so fast, my fine peasant friends. We are now in the time of the "Ni" revolt. Ni is fighting back to regain it's rightful place. Older people have always continued to use the word Ni as a sign of respect or politeness. Those rebellious pensioners. But with the growth of international business and the ambition of many Swedish to Englishise themselves, it's now more common to hear the word Ni again. Often staff in shops, banks and restaurants will use Ni when addressing customers. So, resist the urge to look around quickly to see if there's a crowd suddenly gathered behind you. Personally, I rather miss the good old fashioned class stucture. There was comfort and security in knowing that you were firmly at the bottom of the pile. So I intend to join the Ni revolution and use the word at every opportunity. The worm has turned, and it's coming for Ni. Footnote: I only had to look up the dictionary 5 times to remember the right English words to use here. That's better than normal.

På Svenska

It's tough to prepare for a move to Sweden, and especially, the transition to Swedish. I wish that I had spent more time beforehand. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We had bought a few study books in the 12 months leading up to our move. But I never really opened them in anger. Big mistake if I may say so. There are lots of "Study Guide" books out there, but these worked for me: The first we bought was called "Colloquial Swedish", and is pretty popular. It's an English language book, split into about 20 chapters. Every chapter begins with a short story in Swedish. About 10 or so lines. After the story will be a glossary of new words from that story, and their English meaning. The rest of the chapter will focus on a particular part of Swedish grammar. Each chapter gets progressively more complicated. The book came with a cassette tape, which I have to confess I lost. So never got to find out how effective that was. It's a good book, and explains things well. But can become a little heavy going and, well, boring. While still in NZ, we bought (well, my wife bought, truth be known) a set of 3 books called "På Svenska". The author's name was Ulla Görransson, from memory. Anyway, there was an English book called "studiehäfte", a blue book called "lärobok" and a green book called "övningsbok". The green book was a book full of examples on grammar and sentence structure, while the other two books took you through Swedish by way of normal daily events and situations. Like little stories. They are really good books. But, the best part of the whole thing is that they come also with 3 CDs. Two CDs followed the study books, word for word. So you can follow along quite happily, and get a feel for the spoken word as related to the written word. The third CD contained a lot more examples of the things found in the books. Like, for example, telephone conversations. There are 2 or 3 in the book, which you can listen to while reading the text. But then, there are more (maybe 10) on the CD just to listen to. They mix them up a bit too, so there will be a child speaking first, followed by a teenager, followed by an adult, followed by an older person. Unlike most language tapes, I could actually hear what these people were saying. Personally, I found the "På Svenska" book and CD series to be really good. It is light to read, with lots of pictures, and is rather informal. A good series for kids to read also. They publish the series for many languages, so you need to specify that you want the English version when ordering. I saw that quite a few of my classmates had also bought the series. Once I got here, and particularly once I started with language school, a good "Swedish/English" dictionary (lexikon) was a "must have". The schools have them for use, but you have to leave them at the school, and you have to fight the really tough kids for the use of them. So, best to get your own. The other book I bought was a straight Swedish language dictionary, called "Svensk skolordlista". That was probably one of the best books I have bought. It will give you all the different forms for verbs and nouns, which most of the translation Swedish/English dictionaries don't have. As well as opposites and synonoms. Obviously, being only in Swedish, the definitions of the words are also in Swedish. But that's good also, as a learning tool. REALLY helpful if you get asked to write the definition of a word in class. I ended up using that book instead of the translation dictionary after a couple of months. Definitely recommend investing in that book.

Another night with the U.N.

Couldn't really be bothered going to school last night. Been feeling a bit off colour for a few days now. But, I'm glad that I did. We ended up having a combined class as one of the other teachers was away sick. Or couldn't be arsed turning up. As we were all working at different levels, the lesson plan was quickly chucked out the window. We got split up into groups for an hour of general chat in Swedish. A bit of a time waste, but I got paired up with 4 other people I hadn't met before. Turned out ok though. One of my goals here is to spent some time travelling Russia and the Ukraine. For no particular reason other than that it fascinates me. Ukraine is a bit tricky to get around, from the looks of things. Saint Petersburgh, on the other hand, is just a 90 minute flight from Stockholm. And one can ride a leg of the Trans Siberian railway to Moscow from there. I'm pretty keen on that. So, anyway. We do the standard introductions around our group, and I find out that I'll be spending the next 60 minutes with a guy from Saint Petersburg, 2 girls from Moscow, and a Ukranian grandmother. I couldn't believe my luck. And I couldn't believe that I was considering such a thing to be luck either. To sum up, 60 minutes turned into 2 hours of me quizzing them on their home country. In Swedish, of course. And gettting everything I needed from hotels to bus time tables. I now need to find a group of Egyptian students.

Time and distance

Probably time for a short language update: The Swedish language has two different words for the English word "long". Annoyingly, both versions are very similar in both written and spoken forms. The first "Långt" refers to length, while the other form, "Längt", refers to time. The word Långt also covers for the English word "tall" as well. When some one asks how long (hur lång) you are, they are not referring to a potential sexual encounter. Most probably. They want to know how tall you are. It's not correct to use the Swedish word "hög" instead, which means "high". Even though it might seem to fit better than asking someone how long they are. Time can be expressed in a few different ways: När (which also means "near") means "when" Hur Dags means "what time ?". Längt, as I mentioned, refers to length, or duration, of time. Rather than a specific point in time that the other 2 refer to. Hur dags is used when asking a question. När can also be used in question form, as well as in statement form. When something is to happen right now, it's usual to say "nu är det dags" - "now it's time". Telling the time is uniquely Swedish. As you would guess. It all starts out well enough. Until you get near to the half hour. Then the counting system gets turned on it's head briefly. Here's the guts of it: 25 minutes after the hour is known as "5 minutes before the half hour"; Half an hour past the hour is known as "half an hour before the next hour"; 25 minutes before the hour is known as (hold on to your lunch) "5 minutes after half an hour before the next hour". Then it kind of becomes normal again. So 25 minutes past 4 would be referred to as "5 minutes before half 5". 4:30pm will be EITHER "half five", or 1630. Explains why I'm always an hour late everywhere.

Whodunnit

Well, survived another birthday intact. Pretty quiet affair, really. My brother in law and mother in law arrived round for eftermiddagens (afternoon) fika. Fika is a strange word. It literally means coffee break. But it tends to apply to any type of morning tea, afternoon tea, snack, brunch, or nibble. Any type of food intake that is not covered by breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It includes coffe, of course. And Swedes all appear to drink only black coffee. I don't know, maybe milk is an English thing. But it doesn't stop at coffee. On no. Nope, a fika break always includes several varieties of sweet cakes, bicsuits, buns, and breads. At this point it has progressed way past the point of snack. It's now an officially sanctioned meal. A good rule of thumb is, if you get wind that there may be a fika coming up, starve yourself for several days prior to the event. That night we went out for the evening. Just the 2 of us. which was nice. With work, commuting, language school and horses, we never seem to have a lot of time together apart from collapsing in front of the tv at the end of the day. So it was nice to be almost semi normal as a couple. There's a strange place just outside of our town. Officially it's a Wild West theme park. As one would expect to find in Sweden. Sweden is the home of dansband, so why not. Anyway, they have a large saloon type hall which they use for concerts, shows, corporate dinners, etc. On Saturday night it was a combined dinner and theatre evening. I've always loved live theatre, and Swedes are so enthusiastic actors. Not a lot of Oscars to be won, but they do give it their all. The show itself was a "murder/mystery" evening, played by an acting group touring from the south of Sweden. Just the 5 of them, and one lot of scenery. They played out the performance in 5 parts, stopping for 15 minutes between each part to allow for the next course of dinner to be served. During the break prior to the final act, every member of the audience was given a piece of paper and a pencil, and asked to guess who was the murderer. The true identity was revealed during the gripping final act. All rather exciting. I was really impressed with myself in that I was able to pretty much follow what was going on. Not every word, but enough to comprehend what was being said and what the significance of it was. Well enought to even have an idea about which one of the five actors was the dirty rotten evil scoundrel. Which amazed me. I think it was largely due to it being live theatre. Because actors in theatre performances tend to be a bit over the top with actions, and tend to be quite definite and crisp with the words, it was a lot easy to follow in Swedish than normal conversation. So there's a tip for all fellow new players out there. Go to a Swedish live theatre performance. Just sit there watching and listening for a couple of hours. Between over the top body actions and the slow booming dialogue, you might almost make sense out of it. It's certainly easier than trying to listen to the half dead news presenters on television.

Språk Schmoke

Here's one for the "thanks for nothing" box. I live in the north, right. I go to language school in the north, right. So you would think they would include local dialect in the course, right. Wrong. Every now and then I hear something around town that sounds gammitically screwed up. So I tuck it away and ask my ever helpful evening class teachers. To which the reply comes out "Oh, that's local dialect. everyone up here says that". Sure, everyone except for me and the rest of us sitting here in your class, BECAUSE YOU NEVER TAUGHT US THAT. Thanks for nothing. And then, and then, they teach for the word for something. Brilliant, filled with confidence. Only to tell you a couple of months later that it's old Swedish, and no one really says that today. Thanks for nothing.

Speaking of språk

Got a letter in the post yesterday from Vuxenutbildning in Luleå. That's the school for grown up kids. Minus the free lunches. Telling me that the SFI ( Swedish for Immigrants ) evening classes were starting back next week. A new teaching staff list this time around. And they all looked like Swedish names too. Which will be a change from being taught Swedish by Danes and Russians. I wonder how many of my comrades in arms will be returning to the front line with me after 2 months of R&R. Such a motley mixture we were, I suspect we must resemble an international cast of Gilligan's Island. Two Eastern European blackmarket barons, a guy from Congo currently in his 11th year of Swedish language study, a Urkrainian grandmother, a Russian doctor ( and potential registered sex offender ), an Indian guy desperate for love, a Chinese couple hell bent on divorce, 2 French guys who I think simply got lost on the way to somewhere else, and a somewhat cynical Kiwi. All being taught Swedish by a divorced Dane. You couldn't invent such a bizarre group. The real sobering part for me in attending language class, is the great leveller that language brings to people. Here we are, people from all corners of the globe. All with different religious and ideological beliefs. All with different educational backgrounds. Farmers, chemical engineers, company executives, housewives. All of us siting in a small room together at night, twice a week. Stripped bare of status. Everyone of us, exactly the same. We share nothing in common, yet are bound together by adversity. Exactly as Ginger, Gillian, Maryanne, the skipper, the professor, and the Howells. Normally our paths would never cross. By choice. But here we embrace each other. There's a warmth and comfort in not being alone in our struggle. One valuable lesson I have learnt from living in a foreign speaking country, is to acquire a unquestioning respect for those immigrants I had watched struggle in my homeland. I think there's a great truth in the notion that everyone should walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Many people criticise the SFI system. And I think they could do better in their methods. But, for me, being in the company of a group who knows EXACTLY for tough and how soul destroying the road to this new life can be at times. Well, it would not be an overstatement to say that it has saved my Swedish life. On a number of occasions. So to that motley mismatched crew who share the lifeboat with me 2 nights a week, I salute you all.