(edit title) Is this language a joke or it's just only me? Your personal experience with Svenska Options

[Puffin]

Ok, let me rephrase...Is anybody here who could say his Swedish is as fluent as the second language can be?I am not talking now about ordering a beer, kebab or BLT..I am talki ... (show full quote)

Ok, let me rephrase...
Is anybody here who could say his Swedish is as fluent as the second language can be?
I am not talking now about ordering a beer, kebab or BLT..I am talking about forgeting about English completely
and managing your everyday life, especially at work, in Swedish only. ... (hide full quote)

I work in a Swedish workplace where Swedish is the spoken language - I conduct most of my work in that language although I am perhaps aware that my standard of written work - for example if I had to produce a 100 page report - is below my standard of English writing

But I do a lot of teaching and lecturing to various groups in Swedish

I manage day to day stuff such as reading the papers, shopping, hospital appointments and contacts with my kids schools etc in Swedish (turns out that I am better at reading the law in Swedish compared to one of the Head teachers my kids had as well )

I would not say that I forget English as we speak only English at home - very rarely Swedish (only when we have visitors)

I think age is important - I was a little older when I passed Svenska B (gymnasiet) - although not as old as the German lady at the school who passed Svenska B at 71!!!

[mjmm7]

Learning Swedish is not easy for us native English speakers.I found out why when I visited a maternity ward recently. As soon as the baby was born it was taken off "to be ... (show full quote)

Learning Swedish is not easy for us native English speakers.

I found out why when I visited a maternity ward recently. As soon as the baby was born it was taken off "to be cleaned up" but they actually drilled a hole in the roof of it's mouth so it would be able to produce the "correct" sounds when it starts to speak.

When I asked the sister if this was painful or risky she said there was absolutely no pain because the roof immediately after birth was so soft. She did however admit that the main side effect was it could lead to an acute sense of humour failure.

On balance though she believed it was better to sacrifice a sense of humour if it enabled the child to pronounce Swedish words correctly. ... (hide full quote)

hahaha. C'mon! No one else ?

[Gazelle66]

I agree entirely with tjclark...I am considering tying a scarf very tight around my neck just below my chin. I have downloaded the free app 'Babbel' onto my phone to get me started, but I'm guessing that I need to attend structures classes to get to a reasonable standard..

[axiom]

For a native English speaker I find that Swedish is difficult for a few reasons:

The structure of a sentence - noun verb order

The creation of definitive forms and plurals occur by bending the end of the words, in four different ways

et and en words have no real differentiating logic

Words are created by concactenation, resulting in seemingly endlessly long words

The absence of an equivalent "the" or "do", the mysteriously appears as "den" or "det" when saying something like "the red car" "den röda bilen" whereas "the car" is simply "bilen"

when you begin speaking swedish for the first time your brain natively searches for a direct english translation which sometimes become a problem.

BUT it get easier as you practice, or perhaps take SFI, I never had formal Swedish classes, I learn all by tv or reading and talking and after 3yrs I am fluent, so its not hard.

[Somebody]

If you are fluent after 3 years of listening and reading only I am a native Swedish speaker..
It's ridiculous what you wrote or maybe you are some kind of a lingo genius

[chazza]

Don't forget that there is fluency and there is accuracy in language use.
(the goal is both of course)
However, the poster is claiming fluency he may not necessarily have a high evel of accuracy

[axiom]

If you are fluent after 3 years of listening and reading only I am a native Swedish speaker... It's ridiculous what you wrote or maybe you are some kind of a lingo genius

Firstly I never said listening and reading, I said listening, reading and TALKING.

Secondly I am going to assume that you do not understand the concept of fluency.

whilst not necessarily authorative on the topic, here's a hint from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluency#Language_fluency

It does not equate to perfection, native-like language nor a complete vocabulary set. I will never be able to speak or use Swedish as effeciently as a native Swede does, English is my native language and in most cases provides a suitable medium for self-expression.

Fluency is being able to conduct oneself within the general discourse of society through the use of a language. One can watch the TV, read the newspapers, attend meetings, undertake courses and conduct social verbal interaction while relying solely on Swedish as the language of interaction. One is not expected to know the entire vocabulary or carry perfect diction but speak sufficiently to interect with both native and other speakers of the language.

Perfection is a whole other concept, and most foreign speakers of a language never achieve this. Not every person I meet who speaks English as a second language I could regard as having perfect English, but a significant number I interact with are fairly fluent. Perhaps on occasion I even fall into the former.

[GroRez]

As a native French speaker and decent English speaker, Swedish was at the beginning hard due to the pronunciation.
Then after one year and a half I got a good grip on that one, and could directly translate in my head the Swedish sentence I heard to English. That works quite well for understanding and being able to keep the person in front of you speaking in Swedish. But then when it's your turn to talk, well, without formal courses you would always make grammar mistakes, whether or not you are fluent at the language.

So far I learned swedish without courses, just through daily life here. But this way of learning shows really quickly its limits when you have to do more than talk about the weather.

[Puffin]

As a native English speaker I can say that learning Swedish is MUCH MUCH easier than Danish - that is really tough to learn

[rtharper]

There is a brilliant study about word acquisition cross-linguistically that compared Danish and Croatian children. I can't remember the age they mentioned, something under 5, in which Croatian children could identify almost twice as many words as Danish children. The focus of particular study dealt with phonological development, and was one way of quantifying how effing difficult Danish phonology is, even for natives.

If you are a Swedish speaker, however, learning to understand Danish is a much more tractable task, and there's even a website to get you started: www.danskaspraket.se =)

[Puffin]

Yep

When I lived in Denmark there was a TV documentary about how Danish children learn to read later than the other Nordic countries despite starting school eariler - most was found to be the low level of correlation between written and spoken langauge

However not everyone can understand other Scandinavian languages - have been at some hilarious conferences - it is very hard for second language aquirers to do though

[rtharper]

However not everyone can understand other Scandinavian languages - have been at some hilarious conferences - it is very hard for second language aquirers to do though

My Swedish is by no means near-native, but I find I can get the gist of a Norwegian conversation (Østnorsk or certain Western dialects that are closer to Icelandic in vocab if not phonology), and sometimes a lot more. Danish is more difficult, and I'm pleased when I can figure out a word per sentence

I would be surprised if I couldn't eventually learn to understand them with much more ease, however. I simply assume that, especially as a second language learner, it would require practice as opposed to coming "for free".

[BritVik]

As a native English speaker I can say that learning Swedish is MUCH MUCH easier than Danish - that is really tough to learn

I would add to that - also to speak, since it seems to require the swallowing of a potato or similar in order to 'pronounce' the words.
But Swedish - the spoken language - is somewhat difficult in itself and does take time. The problem gets worse the older you get, since hearing depreciates, and that is definitely a great part in understanding a language. I have greater difficulty these days in following a conversation, than say twenty years ago, and folks seem to speak even quicker today than they did then, which adds to the turmoil.
You need to think in Swedish to be able to follow it better. The need to constantly 'translate in your mind' all the time builds a time barrier such that the conversation has moved on from your own 'time' so to speak.
When I came here in 1960, I only had a very small pocket dictionary to work with, and words that were not in that book I avoided, until I was able to 'move on'. That way I avoided much of what is generally regarded by non-Swedes as profanities. As I have previously said in another thread, reading Kalle Anka helped me to learn the 'infill' words and the shortened forms in the same way as children learn them. Technical Swedish was never a problem, but the everyday stuff only came after a while - helped by the 'high level KA literature'.
Patience is a virtue - Oh so true especially with Swedish ! ! !

[gplusa]

Yeah, it's pretty tough as you get older. One of the biggest problems I had was learning to change the shape of my mouth when speaking. NZ spoken English is very lazy and monotone, you just open your mouth slightly and let the sounds fall out as they may. Apparently we're very difficult to lip read. Which is not always a disadvantage as we often have bugger all worth reading. Anyway, that speaking action doesn't translate very well into Swedish, so a whole new set of facial expressions had to be acquired. Aside from those displaying panic and despair, that is.

[BritVik]

Yes, especially when trying to get a good pronunciation of 'sju'.

Wrap your lips around 'sju sjösjuka sjömän på skeppet Charlotta' and you will see what I mean.