Yes ladies you did read that right. I am growing increasingly weary of being referred to as ‘cute’ and prompting collective ‘aahhs’ when I butcher yet another svensk ord. An American, who is also learning the language, pointed this out to me the other day and now I’m hyper aware I’ll get the ‘duktig pojke’ treatment every time I even try to say something in Swedish. It’s bad enough that everybody here speaks English better than I do but the collective pity when I screw something up is getting rather tiresome.
Since my last post we’ve had a quiz in the classroom where we had to use our new vocabulary to nominate words in an alphabet game. I say game but this was no timid contest, more like downright warfare as each table guarded their answers as if their life and last semla depended on it. On our table we scribbled furiously when each letter was nominated and in each case we had to have a word for a fruit or vegetable, an adjective, an item of clothing, a body part and an animal. Still awake? Right, so were romping away in the lead until the dreaded ä came up which knocked our score down a tad. Even it my contribution was marginal (I held our spare pen) it was fun to be part of a team although we did eventually finish second. In the mayhem of our defeat I acquired a new word, ‘fuska.’ Go figure.
All of which brings us up to the present day. Not a great deal to report from our first lesson of the week which this time round is my only one as I am leaving the classroom behind for a few days. As per normal I am bricking it that I will forget everything that I have, ahem, learned and return to find a rather large hat marked with the letter D on my desk.
Must dash the final semla of the year awaits…
how much do you study at home? tack!
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I do some private study in my spare time and try to speak Swedish with friends and family. Clearly I’m not doing enough as I remain firmly in the awkward phase but I refuse to give up
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Hello! Just stumbled upon your blog, I’m Swedish, living in England, with an Irish bf who is learning Swedish. We go back to Sweden a few times a year and he keeps improving, slowly.
On the whole ‘cute’ thing: over Easter my sister sat at the kitchen table teaching him the animals, right down to wasp (geting) and bumblebee (humla – you probbably know these). When quizzed a couple of hours later, he declared proudly that a wasp as a ‘humling’ in Swedish. Which provoked a collective ‘aaaaaaaw’. adorable. But having read your post, perhaps i’ll have to ask him if he finds it annoying too.
Anyway, he’s yet to experience the joys of SFI, maybe in a few years when we move across!
Anna
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