Where I'm At

First, let me tell you a bit about myself.

I'm a starter.

Whew! It feels good to get that off of my chest. What do I mean by starter? It's like the opposite of a quitter. I start things. Lots of things. I started this blog. I might start a youtube channel. Before this, I started a completely different blog. I started playing the ocarina once too.

I started learning Swedish a while back. I've also started learning German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto, and Russian. I can even hold short conversations in some of them. I never quit any of that stuff, I just started other stuff.

So what does this have to do with learning Swedish by the summer of 2015? Nothing. At least, not directly. This is to document (as is everything I put here) the type of personality I have. It is an explanation of why this blog may go dormant. Of course, my goal is to update weekly as my proficiency increases. That's my goal.

As I mentioned before, this is not the first time I've tried to learn Swedish. I made it through most of the Pimsleur course. I stopped the course right about when it started to get creepy. How can a course begin with an innocent conversation on a train, and hours later the male voice actor is trying to pressure the female actor into a date? And he's always asking where her husband is. What's up with that, Pimsleur people? I don't think I want high pressure dating tactics to be a part of my curriculum.

Aside from the creepy stuff, I feel like I learned some useful phrases. So that should be helpful. I still have very little grasp on grammar. With the other languages, I used Michel Thomas cd's. I really like the foundation I got from those. I felt like I really understood how the language works. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything like that for Swedish.

I do have a small collection of Swedish resources. My next step is to go through those and formulate a plan of attack. I guess, until then, I can dust off the Pimsleur course. Or maybe I'll just listen to Black Ingvars. I have no idea what these guys are saying. But I will. Eventually.

Welcome

Hej and welcome to my new blog One Year Till Swedish. My name is Dustin and I'll be learning Swedish over the next year. The point of this blog is to document my progress.

Why Swedish? Why not? I've been interested in language learning for quite a while. I've also been fascinated with the Swedish language and culture ever since I met some people from that part of the world.

Why one year? That's about how long I have until I get a visit from one of my Swedish friends, and I'd like to able to communicate with him in his own language since he took the time to learn mine. Do I expect to reach fluency in a year? Nope. But I do believe I can become conversational within that time frame.

Why document it? This is not my first time trying to learn the language. The last time, I got discouraged due to lack of resources that worked for me. Also the lack of Swedish resources in general can be disheartening. This time, I hope that making my goals public will help keep me accountable for my goals. I would also like to leave something that might be helpful to other learners.

In the next few posts, I'll give some background about where I'm starting and in which direction I intend to go.
Thanks for stopping by.
Hej då