Video corrections

So it's been just over a week since my first Swedish video went up. I have to say, I did not anticipate the amount of feedback that I received. Shortly after uploading, I submitted the link to /r/svenska. Within minutes I was getting tips on how to sound more natural, corrections on pronunciation, and all sorts of ego boosting compliments.

The compliments were nice, but the feedback was why I was there.

After I posted the video, I showed it to my Swedish friend. He approved but commented on my accent. He told me that I sounded American, but it's ok because an American "can't break from the American accent".

Some of the feedback from reddit was pretty similar. My pronunciation isn't the best. I could use the excuse Well I'm just a beginner, but that wouldn't be accurate. The truth is, I glossed over much of the early stuff like pronunciation. The result is, I don't sound as good as I want. Sure, I'm understandable, but why settle for just understandable when I know I could do better?

So where are my issues? 

Vowels. Specifically  o, a, u, y.
So I went to forvo and listened to the words where I was pronouncing these letter incorrectly. 

Tala(r). I used it quite a bit. It's the word I know to convey the idea of speaking. But it was pointed out to me that 'talar' sounds too formal, and to sound more natural I should use 'prata'.

Det är slutet. I used it to signify the end of the video. In my mind it was correct, and it was understood to mean the end of my video. However, it just doesn't sound natural. 'Det var allt' would have been a better choice for 'that's it'.

The rest of my issues were mostly grammar, and I'm not surprised by that at all. Swedish has a lot of patterns and rules, and I just don't know them all yet. I'll get the hang of it eventually though.

Plurals

I'm not going to lie, Swedish plurals are tripping me up right now. It took me longer than it should have to work through the plurals section on Duolingo last night. I'm probably going to go back through it just to make sure I understand it all.

The helpful thing about Swedish, is that it seems to use a lot of patterns. (Except when it doesn't. Which can feel like all the time.) Most of the time, you just have to learn the patterns (like with verbs) and then apply them when necessary. Thanks to the explanation on Duolingo, I have a decent pattern for plurals which I'll explain below.

If you haven't tried the Swedish course on Duolingo, you really should. You can find it here.

Alright, on to the good stuff.

So as you probably know, Swedish nouns are grouped by gender. (If you didn't know that, now you do.) They are either common -en- words, or neuter -ett- words, and you pretty much just have to learn the gender when you learn the word. And you can't skip them, because then you'll never be able to say a or the in regards to a noun. Fun!

I'll be breaking up the explanation on plurals by the noun gender, which is how I learned it.

EN Words

 Common -en- words that end with an 'a' will switch to an 'or' in plural form.
en flicka > flickor  (girl > girls)

If your word ends in an 'e' it will switch to 'ar'.
en pojke > pojkar  (boy > boys)

Words ending in 'ing' become 'ingar'.
en tidning > tidningar  (newspaper > newspapers)

 Words ending in 'are' don't change.
en läkare > läkare  (doctor > docktor)

 Words with a stress on the last syllable will add an 'er'.
en elefant > elefanter  (elephant > elephants)

Words ending in 'el' 'er' and 'en' will usually drop the 'e' and add an 'ar' to the end.
en vinter > vintrar  (winter > winters)

 One syllable words will usually take an 'ar' but sometimes will take an 'er'. You just have to learn them.
en hund > hundar  (dog >dogs)


ETT Words (the easy set)

  If the word ends in a consonant, there is no ending.
ett barn > barn  (the child > children)

 If the word ends in a vowel, it gets an 'n' on the end.
ett äpple > äpplen  (apple > apples)

 Irregular Words

There are both -en- and -ett- words that  don't follow any of these rules (because why not?). Instead, they often change the main vowel of the word.
en man > män (man > men)

Unfortunately, you have to learn these words as you run into them.


So that's it. You should now be able to puzzle your way through Swedish plurals. Once again, all this information came from Duolingo. Go check out their Swedish course, it's really helping me along.

Until next time. Tack så mycket och hej då.

My first video!

So, I recorded my first Swedish video today. It's nothing special, just me trying cram as much Swedish as I can remember into about a minute's worth of video. The pronunciation is probably bad. The intonation is probably bad as well. This is literally (and I mean literally) the first time anyone has heard me (try) to speak Swedish. I feel this is an important step on my path to learning the language, and once I get this out there, it should be easier to make more.

As always I welcome comments and feedback. If you can correct me, please do so. If you're learning too, make a video of your own (and be sure to send me the link).

New Resources Page

It's taken a few days to go through all of my saved links, and I'm still not done. I do, however, have enough content compiled that I feel comfortable publishing the new Resources page a bit early. Keep in mind that this list of Swedish learning resources will never be complete. As I find more things that seem helpful, or just entertaining, I'll update the list.

As always, I'm open to comments and suggestions. So if you have something to say, don't hold back.
I hope this is as helpful to you as it is to me. Tack så mycket and have fun.

Click here for the resources page.

Duolingo has a Swedish course now.

So I'm back after my (too long) NaNoWriMo break, and I'm ready to get back into the Swedish saddle. To be honest, I think the break did some good. I was slowing down and beginning to lose focus. That's something that I have to be especially aware of, because, as I've mentioned before, I'll drop subjects in favor of something new and shiny. I'm like some sort of educational magpie.

I wasn't slacking while I was away, not too much anyway. I've still been listening to Swedish music and talk radio every chance I get. I've also taken to setting my ipod to shuffle the Pimsleur course while I'm at work. I think I have that thing pretty close to memorized. I also have a list of irregular Swedish verbs sitting in front of me that I've been looking over and we'll get to those soon on this blog.

Here's what I have coming up...

 Videos. I'll be setting up a youtube page pretty soon and linking videos from there. They'll probably be me, trying to speak Swedish and asking for feedback. I'll also be making videos to show off any random sort of Swedish awesomeness I happen to come across. I don't want to reveal too much, but this should give you an idea.


Resources. I've been collecting all sorts of free tools and links that should be helpful to anyone learning Swedish, or anyone interested in Swedish and Sweden in general. So look forward to a page dedicated to that.


Here's what I'm doing now...

Duolingo. Before I started my break, I knew that Duolingo had a Swedish course in the works, but it hadn't been released yet. As I was catching up on /r/svenska, I was pleased to learn that it was finally available. You can find the course here, and if you want to be my Duolingo friend, you can find me right here. I've only made it past the first three levels so far, but I like what I'm seeing.





That's all I've got to update this time, but I'll be back soon with more.
 Until then, tack så mycket och hej då.

And here is some Swedish humor, because why not?