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Swedish Day 2: Hej

 

Words Learned: Hej (hello), Hej då (goodbye), Vad heter du (What's your name?), Jag heter (My name is ~), Tack (thanks), Ja (yes), Nej (no)

Progress: I have reached level 4 on Duolingo. It's always surprising how quickly the lowest levels of Duolingo go. I expect to reach level 5 by tomorrow. I've been using Swedishpod101, Swedish music, and kids TV shows to get an ear for how the language sounds. I've read through the first chapter of Complete Swedish and listened to the audio. I even started a Swedish course on Memrise (I just went for the most popular Swedish course on there).

On Pronunciation: A lot of coursebooks and other learning tools start with pronunciation. I look at those lists of sounds and become completely baffled and frustrated.

Instead of memorizing pronunciation, I believe in learning pronunciation in context. It is so much easier to remember that kött (meat) is pronounced like "shoht" than to memorize that when k is in front of an ö it makes a "sh" sound.

I do like watching videos about pronunciation - often in the background while I'm doing other Swedish studying (I am one of those people who appreciate background noise). Academia Cervena has a great youtube playlist with a ton of helpful videos, including the one below on pitch accent. The pitch accent one was amazingly interesting and grabbed my full attention. It is a good video to watch at the beginning of my journey into Swedish.

Next up: Reach level 5 of Duolingo, memorize some food words (I've learned them via Duolingo, but have not started to memorize them), make flashcards.

Swedish Day 1: A Look at the Resources

For March, April, and May my focus will be on that melodic language of the far north: Swedish. I'm quite excited. This is my first 3 month challenge. All my previous language learning was in the classroom was just sporadic, unfocused learning. I've set mini 1-month challenges over the past year and those have gone well. But this time I want to be more systematic and in-depth  in my language self-learning.

Goal: A2 in Swedish by May 31

So how will I go about doing this? I've got four main resources:
1.

I've used Innovative Language's free podcast episodes for a variety of languages, but this is the first time I'm actually going to sign up and pay for a program. I'm trying out the free one month premium membership, and will see at the end of March whether I want to continue or go for the cheaper basic package. Swedish is a language with a dearth of podcasts. And by a dearth, I mean no other full podcasts. Survival Swedish Phrases is actually just 15 free episodes of SwedishPod101's survival phrases series. And One Minute Swedish by Radio Lingua is a good introduction, but it's only ten episodes and doesn't take you beyond the basics. Podcasts are essential for me to get a real feel for how a language sounds, so a subscription to SwedishPod101 is kind of a necessity for me to really get somewhere in my Swedish quest.

2.

Duolingo is another essential part of my language learning. It's to the point where if there's a new language I want to learn, I probably won't even make an attempt before there is a Duolingo course available. There's just no better way for me to drill vocabulary. I know, I know, there's Memerise, but for some reason it has never been able to keep my attention.
3.  

Not everyone is a fan of textbooks, but I like to have one on hand as a resource. The beautiful and terrible thing about Swedish is that there just aren't that many textbooks available in English, so the decision on which to use is easier. I also looked at the Hippocrene Beginner's series and the Colloquial series, but based on the reviews on Amazon, it looks like Teach Yourself is the best book for the true beginner. If I make good progress in March and April, I may buy either Colloquial or Hippocrene in May.

4.  

Pimsleur has its faults, but it works for repeating phrases until they are burned into the brain. I find it to is the most effective resource when I'm in the car. 

Of course, there are other resources out there I will be using to supplement the above. I've found some instructional videos and children's TV shows on Youtube. I will try Memrise (again!). On Hulu, there is Welcome to Sweden season 1, a Swedish/American TV show in both languages. On Netflix, there is Wallander in Swedish. And the Svenska subreddit has a helpful index of resources that I am exploring. If I'm feeling really brave, I may even get an exchange partner or a tutor on iTalki!