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[Dark One]

Greetings!

I'm studying English philology and I have already had courses such as linguistics, morphology, phonetics - they allowed me to understand English better, but also gave more knowledge about components of languages.

I'm interested in learning Swedish since I have first heard it and I would like to learn it. I thought about starting with phonetics and phonology, then moving on with other aspects of the language.

I would like to hear any tips on learning this language from its native speakers, anyone that is able to speak it fluently or languages teachers in general. It's always good to hear someone's opinion!

[scriver]

Tjena! I am a native Swedish speaker. I'm not sure what kind of tips you are looking for (you'd have to be more specific, I lack imagination), but here is my top three advice:

1. Take the potato out of your mouth (just in case you're Danish)
2. Don't trust anyone with a Stockholmian accent, they think they can speak Swedish but they can't. The poor fools can't even pronounce Ö and Ä! They say U and E respectively.
3. If you're okay with speaking archaic 19th century-speak you can get away with using I, the first person pronoun, the same way it is used in English, but you also have to exchange all other singular pronouns for "en" ("one").

[Dark One]

Well, I had already read about history of Swedish language, phonetics and phonology and I had found somewhere that English and Swedish morphology are highly similar.

I'm not Danish, so I don't have Irish scale potato problem. I focus on Rikssvenska (Standard Swedish) accent. I don't have any problems with Jag, Vi, Ni or other personal pronouns, as well as with singular pronouns.

Already started practicing with Duolingo, activated Swedish keyboard so I can write all the letters and I practice daily. It'd be great to be able training speaking with a native speaker, but I don't know the language enough to speak more than simple phrases yet.

[scriver]

Here are some useful sayings and phrases:

"Jag köper inte den här skivan; den är repad."
"Min svävare är full med ålar."
"Vill du följa med hem till mitt ställe, studsi-studs?"

[Dark One]

Tack så mycket!

I'll translate them and try to memorize.

[Kagus]

I don't speak Swedish personally, but I understand enough to tell you that the three sayings scriver provided are primarily concerned with buying matches and cigarettes from a tobacconist. So if you don't smoke, they're not hugely useful.

[ChairmanPoo]

Vill du följa med hem till mitt ställe, studsi-studs?"
Soundsnpromising

[Il Palazzo]

Herdy dur mur flerpty floopin. Yer shmer dor her der foomty, der shoopin flerpty dur.

[balrogkernel]

swedish some similarities with english, though practicing and using swedish is quite difficult.  it's difficult because the vast majority of scandinavian people are good at using english, so for practicality's sake most people really aren't going to use swedish when they talk to you if you're not fluent in swedish.  i haven't focused on swedish, i've been learning danish.  yeah, blah blah blah, nationalism and bad jokes aside, really danish and swedish are quite similar languages.  some helpful hints that i've learned. learning a language takes time.

start with basic vocabulary like nouns for family members, the names of animals, vehicles for transportation, colors.  sing kids songs with rote repetition, doesn't matter if you get the pronunciation perfect.  just keep doing it.  when you learn your vocabulary write the words down slowly. you can look at matching pictures while you write down the corresponding words.  if you're learning other languages it's important that these pictures are novel to the pictures you've associated with other languages. for example, when you look at a picture of a raven, if you're learning danish write ravn slowly.  if you're learning swedish, you need to look at a totally different picture of a raven and write korp slowly. 

try watching a television show.  for me it was watching a danish show named klovn.  it doesn't matter if you understand what people are saying.  for me it was easier to learn danish from klovn than it was to learn for example learn danish from matador.  look at their expressions and guess what's going on generally.  i think comedies are just better for learning, at least for me.  olsenbanden was also fairly useful because those characters had catchphrases. 

next step, write basic sentences with very basic verbs like do, walk, and eat. "We eat food" "They play outside" "I have a hat".  didn't focus on tenses and all that other stuff until later. if you feel more ready in this stage, add prepositions.  "step out".  "walk over"

next step, combine the simple and the complex.  try watching very simple kids shows.  for danish it would be bamses billedbog. i think there is a swedish version of this too.  mumitrold (mumintrollet in swedish) is also pretty simple but a little more challenging.  if you start getting bored, which is likely, switch to something that is more challenging.  for example try reading an astrid lindgren book like brothers lionheart or mio my son in swedish.  even reading one page is very helpful.  welcome older materials that can be considered "too complicated for a beginner".  even reading one page of njal's saga in swedish gives a lot of insight into the foundation of how the language works, even if you end up memorizing some stuff without 100% comprehension it's still helpful for pushing forward and continuing practice. 

vi ses.

[scriver]

really danish and swedish are quite similar languages

vi ses.

I don't think so buddy

[Kagus]

Jesus Christ, you want to pick up a little Danish from an easy comedy, and you pick Klovn? Klovn is some hardcore shit, dude... That's pure, weaponized cringe right there.

If you want something a little less painful, there are plenty of good Danish movies to pick from (I'm not really versed in their TV shows outside of Klovn). They're all a little, well, weird, but that's just Scandinavian culture for you. I'd recommend Adams Æbler and Blinkende Lygter, or if you want to check out some of their animated movies, there's the essential Terkel i Knibe, as well as Ronal Barbaren and Rejsen til Saturn.

As an aside for the non-scandis out there; while Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are all quite similar in their written forms, the spoken forms of each language differ quite a bit more. Danish differs most of all, and is probably the hardest of the three to learn how to pronounce correctly. I speak Norwegian and never spent much time on Swedish, but I can understand enough to keep a conversation going, and I can do a fairly decent pronunciation of a few basic words.

Danish, I just make a few guttural noises and hope for the best... And I can't understand a wild Dane worth a damn, especially not when they go full word-avalanche. So if anyone feels like they're having a hard time with the language, you're not alone.


Then again, that's not even touching on the subject of dialects... I don't know how bad Danish is with this, but both Norway and Sweden are rife with various dialects that change things to the extent of effectively being an entirely different language. When I was in the military, we had one fellow in the platoon who quickly made a name for himself by being completely unintelligible. Not even his roommates from the same general region could understand him, at least not once he got a couple pints in him...


And yeah, there are a lot more similarities between English and Danish/Swedish/Norwegian than with, say, German. There was a lot of Nordic influence on Old English, and some of it's stuck around through the ages.