Posts tagged learning swedish

sverige-a-sa-vidare:

I made a post sometime before about listening to Disney music in order to practise Swedish. I thought I’d just note that again, and give you some links, in case anyone missed the post or had planned to start doing it but forgot :-) 

Links to some Disney films’ Swedish Youtube searches, so you can get started fast: 

• Snow White - Snövit
• Pinocchio
• Dumbo
• Peter Pan
• Lady and the Tramp - Lady och Lufsen
• Sleeping Beauty - Törnrosa
• The Sword in the Stone - Svärdet i stenen
• Aristocats
• The Little Mermaid - Den lilla sjöjungfrun
• Beauty and the Beast - Skönheten och odjuret
• Aladdin
• The Lion King - Lejonkungen
• Pocahontas
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Ringaren i Notre Dame
• Hercules
• The Princess and the Frog - Prinsessan och grodan
• Tangled - Trassel

You can of course just search for the English movie titles and add “Swedish” after to find most songs. You can probably find lyrics to many of them by Googling, too - otherwise please ask me and I’ll type them up for you! 

My personal learning tip is to find songs you like listening to and then to listen to those same select songs often. By doing that, you’ll also be able to tell when you’re starting to understand more (after a month maybe you understand twice as much as you did the first few times you listened). And, learn the lyrics by heart! You don’t have to sing if you don’t want to, but try to remember the text either way. It’s easier to remember a song than some random phrase, plus you might practise some pronunciation if you pay attention to how the words really sound. Of course, this goes for all kinds of songs, not just Disney music :-P

imfuckingmovingtosweden:

Before we got here, I tried to get a feel for the language as often as possible by watching Swedish movies and kids shows. I think it’s been really beneficial and pretty entertaining at the same time. I want to share some of my favorites, so if you’re learning Swedish I highly recommend these:
Bamse a cute cartoon about a bear that becomes “the strongest bear in the world” when he eats honey. It’s really easy to follow and the narrator speaks slowly.

Alfons Åberg, a super simple and easy to follow story line. The good thing about this show is you can find the episodes in English so if you really can’t follow, you can watch it in English first, then Swedish.

One of my childhood favorites, Pippi Långstrump. Pippi is originally Swedish of course. **Bonus** Here’s a pic of me dressed up as her for Halloween

I’ve also really enjoyed Sunes Sommar (here’s a really funny scene that is in English. If you don’t get it google negerbollar.) The movie is kind of similar to National Lampoon’s Vacation with Chevy Chase. It has the same bumbling, accident prone husband and kids getting themselves into trouble.

And finally the Milenium Series. I really enjoyed all the movies, and even though I’m watching TV I still feel like I’m being productive.

If you are looking for more shows/movies to watch to improve your Swedish also consider:
Fem myor är fler än fyra elephanter
Svenska Sesame (Sesame St.)
You can pretty much download any Disney film dubbed in Swedish.
Resan till Melonia
Ferdinand the Bull (In Swedish)

There you have it. Good luck

-Audrey

Swedish Sesame Street is a thing.

This changes everything. 

What’s the difference between “jämt” and “alltid”? Is there a difference? I see “alltid” used a lot more often but it might just be that I haven’t bothered to look up what “jämt” means before now so I haven’t registered it.

question mark?

Can I just take a moment to say I really love the retroflexed consonants in Swedish?

Like I remember not really getting them and then kind of figuring out the one in -rs and then reading about stuff later and it FINALLY MADE SENSE and I realized I could make these neat sounds and

in the same way that I rejoiced in the swedish y sound once I figured it out and started mentally inserting it into words with y in them

I now want to retroflex when I see the -rs combination

and go out of my way to say swedish words like bord and förvsinn and först and vart to myself because retroflexed conosonants lsdkfjlas

mmm so I think the reason why someone has written 29 pages about “alltså” is because this word is confusing as hell.

I think this one is going to take me a while to reconcile because

it looks/sounds like “also” so that’s how I want to read it (and it occupies places in sentences where “also” could go even if it…doesn’t….make sense in context really)

but it doesn’t mean “also” at all

and the information that it conveys depending on where it is in the sentence is not where I would place that information when speaking english, so finding that information in that place in a sentence is really confusing to me (yes I know that this is a Thing that foreign languages do I can whine if I want to)

along with the fact that it just has such a vague and varied amount of meanings that it’s going to take a lot of practice to figure out what information is actually supposed to be conveyed in each individual sentence, since there isn’t really a direct english equivalent (the paper says that the “direct equivalent” often given in dictionaries etc. is only used like 20% of the time rofl).

reading a 29 page pdf about how the word “alltså” is used.

I am not sure why someone felt the need to write 29 pages on the word “alltså”

or, more importantly

why I am still reading it.

Okay so, I came to the startling and terrible realization that my understanding of adjectives in Swedish is really basic and I need to…make it stop being basic, right now. >:| So I figured I would make a post about adjectives because one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to other people! Native swedes, make sure I don’t make any glaring mistakes D:

So Swedish has two genders for nouns, common (en words) and neuter (ett words). Adjectives reflect the gender and number of the noun they describe.

Let’s say we have the adjective “stor” (big). For common nouns, the adjective is going to stay unchanged, basically just how you would find it in a dictionary.

• en hund - a dog
• en stor hund - a big dog

For neuter words, a -t is added to the adjective.

• ett rum - a room
• ett stort rum - a big room

For plural nouns of either gender, the adjective gains an -a ending.

• två stora hundar - two big dogs
• två stora rum - two big rooms

Those are all examples of adjectives being strongly inflected to show the gender/number of the noun. There is also a weak inflection, where the adjective always ends in -a regardless of number/gender. This is used when talking about a noun in the definite form, or otherwise targeting a specific noun (my own jacket vs. a random jacket, for example).

• den röda hunden - the red dog
• det röda huset - the red house
• de röda rummen - the red rooms
• min stora hund - my big dog
• flickans stora hus - the girl’s big house
• Anders stora rum - Anders’ big room

Note that the den/det/de must be present—it would be incorrect to only write “röda hunden” for “the red dog”.

Also know that the weak inflection is only used when the adjective is directly before the noun—not when the noun is described to be that adjective in another way. If the adjective is prescribed to the noun later, go back to using the strong inflection.

• det stora huset - the big house
• huset är stort - the house is big

Adjectives that end in -d or -dd drop those letters and have them replaced by -tt in neuter form.

• en röd hund - a red dog
• ett rött hus - a red house

Adjectives that end in -ad get an -e instead of -a.

• en intresserad hund - an interested dog
• två intresserade hundar - two interested dogs

The adjective “liten” (small) is annoyingly irregular. It has no plural form of its own, and instead changes to an entirely different word—“små”. When it is weakly inflected, it becomes “lilla”.

• en liten bil - a little car
• ett litet hus - a little house
• två små hundar - two little dogs
• det lilla rummet - the little room.

Anddd the adjective “bra” (well/good) doesn’t change at all no matter where you stick it!

And I think that covers most everything. I might have to make more posts like these to solidify grammar rules in my mind and to use for easy reference. I hope that was vaguely interesting/helpful for some of you XD I’ll come back and add to this if I realize I’ve forgotten something.

civetinabluebox:

Well let’s see how this goes. From the swedish wikipedia article on vivs.

De flesta arter finns i södra och sydöstra Asien. Där sträcker sig utbredningsområdet från Indien och södra Kina till Indonesien och Filippinerna. Viverrider lever även i hela Afrika och på Arabiska halvön. Arten vanlig genett finns dessutom i sydvästra Europa. Dessa djur lever vanligtvis i skogar men även i buskland och savann.

Most species live (literally: exist) in south and southeast Asia. There the range goes from India and Southern China to Indonesia and the Philippines. Viverrids even live in the whole of Africa and on the Arabian Peninsula. The Common Genet species lives in Southwest Europe too. This animal comminly lives in forests but also in the savannah and bushland.

Only thing I noticed right off the bat is that även tends to mean “also” or “too” more than it means “even” (or at least, I think that’s how it fits best here). I know I mentally want to think of it as “even” more since it sounds so similar, but…yeah. If you’re on Wikipedia you’ll notice that the “see also” links are labeled “se även” instead. It’s admittedly not a terribly huge distinction but I figured it was worth noting.

And I guess while I’m being picky, “dessa djur” is plural, so “these animals” would be more correct. “djur” is one of those bastard ett words that don’t change in the plural, but unless I’m remembering incorrectly “dessa” is a plural marker (as opposed to detta/denna for common/neuter singular). :D

(Source: nyfikenienkopp)

This is quite possibly the greatest thing I have ever heard.

ISN’T IT THOUGH

GOD

“you guys they meet in IKEA” I can’t I just I can’t. GO THERE NOW PLS.

ohmygod GO then tell us about your adventures

I’M SORELY TEMPTED I’m reading about it right now ;o; there’s an annual membership fee but it’s like…ten dollars if you’re a student, that’s not bad at all for a year, and they have all these events and culture stuff and they’re going to have a Lucia and ahhh.

AND I COULD BUY BILAR AT IKEA I THINK HELL YEAH