Jump to content
Linguaholic

Where to begin with Swedish?


gegegeno

Recommended Posts

Hi, as in the title I'm wondering where is a good place to start with learning Swedish? I'm planning to travel there and to the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, but my main goal is to be able to better communicate with my SO's Swedish-speaking family.

So I guess my main goal is to be able to speak Swedish pretty well. Reading and writing aren't really a priority.

Can anyone recommend a good audio course or even a textbook or other written material that focusses on Swedish as it's spoken?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Well I have recently started learning Swedish and just got back from a holiday there (it's a brilliant place). The reason I started is because one of my housemates is Swedish, so I got here to teach me some basic quotes. I then did a few beginner courses on the internet for free and kept watching Friends in Swedish with English subtitles (helps a lot). Slowly you pick up more and more and can do some advanced learning. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you remember any of the links you used, rossonomous? Swedish is one of the languages I'm seriously considering picking up more for professional reasons (as is Danish). The trouble is where to start with a language with which one has never had any contact at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd like to know more about those links too.

@rossonomus: You're in luck if you need to learn Swedish and Danish, as they're mutually intelligible languages with each other and Norwegian (though Norwegian-Swedish and Norwegian-Danish is easier than Swedish-Danish).

I can absolutely agree that it's hard to maintain a language that you have little personal contact with, as I found with German, which I had to about A2 level before just stopping because I had no use for it. I'm lucky enough to have a Swedish-speaking girlfriend who can help me along a bit, and meeting her family and not understanding what anyone's saying at dinner has been a great motivator for me. It really drives home that motivation and discipline are so much more important than anything else when learning a new language.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I will dig those links up a little later when I get a chance.

I have no real 'need' to learn the language, it just seemed like something quite fascinating and full of melody so I thought I would give it a try :)

Also it's funny you say about not understanding at the dinner table. While I was on holiday in Sweden, I met this girls family for a big meal and I too had to sit there a lot of the time just twiddling my thumbs and try to catch on to just a couple of words.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

If you could find those links, rossonomous, that would be nice. I figure that Swedish is a very fun language that I could learn and it may become very useful in my planned near-future.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...