Thursday, March 05, 2009

Learning Swedish

The last couple of days I've had to have long, complicated discussion with my endocrinologist (thyroid-lingo), CPA (tax-lingo) and bookkeeper (business administration-lingo), making me slur on the words and giving me a slight headache when talking about very specific topics in another language. Sometimes it sure is tiring to be so dependent on another language. 

Today I read this very interesting article series, "I väntan Sverige"  in the major Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, about immigrants challenges when coming to Sweden. One of them being the language. This article, about learning Swedish, was very interesting (unfortunately you have to learn Swedish to be able to read it...), talking about the challenges you face when coming to Sweden and trying to learn this tiny, pretty complicated language called Swedish. A language where we write words together, putting 2-3 words together to one new word, making them really long and almost impossible to dissect. The journalist, Maciej Zaremba,  really brings up some interesting aspects of learning Swedish.

Being an alien, you sure know what a central part of life knowing the language of the country you reside in is. I'm glad I don't have to struggle to talk to my endocrinologist, my CPA and my bookkeeper in Swedish, should that have been my alien country...

5 comments:

Liz said...

It's funny, I would have the exact same problems discussing jargon-laden industries in Swedish even though Swedish is my first language. However, since the age of 11 I have lived in English speaking environments (save for 1 year), so I guess that's what the problem is. Discussing anything even mildly intellectual is pretty difficult for me in Swedish.
Intressant artikel!

Indie said...

O, you make me despair of ever learning the language! I know I should have started earlier in my life.

It is a measure of your fluency in English that you can converse in those specialized discourse environments.

I am going to try to read the article (good luck when I struggle just to translate children's books....)

Anna, Fair and True said...

Zaremba är så himla bra!

Ally said...

I remember thinking my biggest accomplishment was giving birth in Swedish. I never once, during the two-day labor process, spoke English (except with Peter). Once I did that, I think I figured "Well I'll never have the best Swedish ever, but it's enough."

JaCal said...

Liz - I really liked the article. A very interesting perspective on learning Swedish. How interesting how you have "floated" between the languages. I sure wonder what my kids will do with their languages.

Indie - well, in the article there is also the story about the Polish place you can go to and learn Swedish in 7 months... They have specialized in teaching doctors and dentist Swedish - so there is hope! ;-)

Anna - har inte läst något av honom tidigare - tror jag... läser ju allt på nätet och inte alltid man lägger märke till artikelförfattare.

Ally - oh, I know the feeling... I literally studied "förlossnings-engelska" during my pregnancy... even forced the Husband to sit through a couple of episodes of "Birth Story" on DHC to really get into the lingo (I choose episodes where really scary things happened so he would know the words should I not be able to communicate) haha. Two-days... I got away lucky...