wallflower's Swedish (and only Swedish) log

[wallflower]

Tuesday, November 26
- Book: Aldrig fucka upp by Jens Lapidus, 62% —> 67%
- Series: Innan vi dör, season 1 first half of episode 1

Wednesday, November 27
(nothing)

Thursday, November 28
(nothing)

Friday, November 29
- Series: Innan vi dör, season 1 finished episode 1

Saturday, November 30
- Series: Innan vi dör, season 1 episode 2

Sunday, December 1
(nothing)

Monday, December 2
- Series: Gift vid först ögonkastet, season 10 episode 1—Matchningen

Tuesday, December 3
- Series: Gift vid först ögonkastet, season 10 episode 2—Bröllopet
- Series: Gift vid först ögonkastet, season 10 episode 3—Flytta ihop
- Book: Aldrig fucka upp, 72% —> 75% (evidently I forgot to log one reading session between Tuesday last week and today)

Comments:

Reading last Tuesday only took 1 hour for 25 pages, vs. the 90 minutes for same a couple of nights before. I am hoping I was just rusty, and not that it was an easier passage in the book

I’ve seen the series Innan vi dör (English: Before We Die) before, so this watch I am covering up the subtitles. The (English) subtitles have been covering up my listening deficiencies, so…

It is not counted towards my listening/reading challenge because it was less than 50% Swedish, but I watched the film Hjärter dam. Disturbing film. I don’t want to spoil it so I won’t say anything about the plot, but it was fantastic, thrilling, unexpected. Trine Dyrholm, Magnus Krepper, and Gustav Lindh were all great in this film.

Gift vid först ögonkastet (Married at First Sight) is a reality series where… you guessed it, the contestants couples get married the first time they meet and then try out “married life” for some amount of time, then decide if they’ll stay married I guess. I forget what it explained in the first episode. I have no idea why I am watching this but it is much, much easier to listen to than any drama series right now. So perhaps I just need the pepping up.

I also started the series Börje, but I may or may not count it towards my listening/reading challenge depending on A) how much Swedish there actually is and B) if I succeed at covering up the English subtitles while watching. I think it will be a lot of English though.

All of the streaming services here that offer foreign language content have English subtitles baked-in; there is no turning them off. I have begun (with Innan vi dör) placing an index card on my laptop at the bottom of the screen to cover up the subtitles. I am terrible at not reading them, even when there are scenes in English my eyes gravitate towards the flickering text.

I am undecided if I will even count any tv/film if I use English subtitles from here forward. It feels like cheating. I got “lazy” the last few months with relying on them due to convenience, since at the time it felt like an uphill battle to get in any Swedish at all so I let it slide. Now that I’m back in challenge mode (…mostly), I want those hours to actually “count.”

As of the end of today: the reading pace to achieve 10,000 pages by 2025-12-31 is 21.3 pages/day; the listening/watching pace is 120.4 minutes/day. The pace creeps ever upward as my consistency is not there. Will I inch those paces downward? Tune in next post to find out…

[wallflower]

Wednesday, December 4
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet season 10 episode 4—Bröllopsresan
- Podcast: USApodden: Hunter Biden räddas av pappa presidenten
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet season 10 episode 5—Midsommar, olika behov och kärlekskänslor
- Series: Politikbyrån: Woke-döden (partial)
- Book: Aldrig fucka upp, 75% —> 80%

Thursday, December 5
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet season 10 episode 6—Kris eller möjligheter?
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet season 10 episode 7—Parhelgen

Friday, December 6
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet season 10 episode 8—Konflikter och utmaningar
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet season 10 episode 9—Sista dagarna
- Book: Aldrig fucka upp, 80% —> 83%
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet season 10 episode 10 (I forgot to grab the title)

Comments:

Current pace listening/watching: 120.3 minutes/day to reach 1,000 hours by 2025-12-31
Current pace reading: 21.4 pages/day to reach 10,000 pages by 2025-12-31

Currently it takes me between 1-1.5 hours to read ~25 pages, which is how much I aim to read daily since Kindle doesn't give me page counts for my Swedish epubs. So I have to check Goodreads for the paperback page count, and then convert that to %... and for my current book 1% = 5 pages.

Then the math maths like so:

~2 hours tv/film/podcast/whatever audio + ~1-1.5 hours reading

= ~3-3.5 hours of Swedish listening + reading per day

No wonder I'm not hitting my numbers everyday, no wonder I never seem to have time to make new cards for Anki, no wonder my B-level textbooks sit on the shelf unopened.

I don't know why I thought that was going to be doable. (Yes, my numbers slid from what the paces were about one month ago, but they weren't more doable then than they are now regardless). I guess I can quit trying and failing to find 3+ hours every day to consume Swedish content. I do, in fact, have other things going on in my life that I both want and need to give energy to.

There is way too much to fit into a day or even a week. I can either extend out this 1,000/10,000 goal by another X months or a year (but does that ruin the "cumulative effect," if it takes too long to arrive at the goal?, asks my insecurity), or I can... Idk, drop it entirely, since I have a lot of doubt that the goal will even get me to where I want to be with Swedish. Not quit, but... Idk, if I knew I was not going to reach my goal regardless of how well I use the limited time I have for it each day, and by goal in this instance I mean "know Swedish really well, not need a dictionary nor subtitles etc.," maybe I would approach language learning a lot differently.

[jeff_lindqvist]

There is way too much to fit into a day or even a week. I can either extend out this 1,000/10,000 goal by another X months or a year (but does that ruin the "cumulative effect," if it takes too long to arrive at the goal?, asks my insecurity), or I can... Idk, drop it entirely, since I have a lot of doubt that the goal will even get me to where I want to be with Swedish.

I don't think there's any harm in extending the goal, even changing it entirely. After all, 1000/10000 are just arbitrary numbers (just like the ”three months”/”90 days” in a recent topic). Do 2 hours per day instead of 3 (or 3,5).

You're still doing something (even more than most of us), so you probably won't lose the cumulative effect. By lowering your demands slightly, you also won't reach the diminishing returns. That's my layman's opinion.

[wallflower]

There is way too much to fit into a day or even a week. I can either extend out this 1,000/10,000 goal by another X months or a year (but does that ruin the "cumulative effect," if it takes too long to arrive at the goal?, asks my insecurity), or I can... Idk, drop it entirely, since I have a lot of doubt that the goal will even get me to where I want to be with Swedish.

I don't think there's any harm in extending the goal, even changing it entirely. After all, 1000/10000 are just arbitrary numbers (just like the ”three months”/”90 days” in a recent topic). Do 2 hours per day instead of 3 (or 3,5).

You're still doing something (even more than most of us), so you probably won't lose the cumulative effect. By lowering your demands slightly, you also won't reach the diminishing returns. That's my layman's opinion.

Thanks, @jeff_lindqvist. That was an encouraging, grounded comment and just what I needed to help me decide how to proceed.

****************************************

Saturday, December 7
- Podcast: Kaliber, Klimatkatastrofen del 1: “Vi ber om ursäkt och backar” (publ. 2 dec 2024)

Sunday, December 8
- Series: Innan vi dör, season 1 episode 3

Monday, December 9
- Series: Innan vi dör, season 1 episode 4
- Series: Börje, season 1 episode 1
- Book: Aldrig fucka upp, 83% —> 86%

Tuesday, December 10
- Series: Gift vid första ögonkastet: Vad hände sen?: ”Var det rätt beslut? Jag vet inte”
- Series: Innan vi dör, season 1 first half of episode 5

Wednesday, December 11 - Sunday, December 15
(nothing)

Extending out my goal deadline seemed like the most logical move so I went ahead and added four months to make it 2 years:

Original timeline: May 1, 2024 to December 31, 2025
Adjusted timeline: May 1, 2024 to April 30, 2026

Now I have more realistic paces to keep up with, that add up to around 2-2.25 hours and not the former 3-3.5 hours I was futilely trying to keep up with per day before.

Anyway this month has been less than ideal (health stuff, some home repairs, spilled water on my phone ) so of course the first thing that happens with an easier pace is I miss several days. New week starts tomorrow though.

But onto what I did do… I decided to count Börje since the first couple episodes are actually mostly Swedish, so I restarted the series. This is the first series I’ve seen with Valter Skarsgård as the lead, and Hedda Stiernstedt (Vår tid är nu) plays his love interest. The series is about Börje Salming, “the first European born and trained player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame” according to Wikipedia. I’m not into hockey much but I do like a change of subject in the shows I’ve been watching.

I also watched the… I don’t know what it’s called, the follow up episode? of season 10 of Gift vid första ögonkastet, titled Vad hände sen?: ”Var det rätt beslut? Jag vet inte”—which translates to What happened next?: “Was it the right decision? I don’t know”—which is about what I’d expect to say after marrying someone the first time I’d met them… but (SPOILER ALERT) this quote was from one of the guys on the show who chose to stay married at the end of the season, but then later broke up with (divorced?) his wife, and refers to his decision to dump her. Great show

And finally, rewatch of Innan vi dör continues to be great. I struggle with some of the characters/actors with accents, but in particular Davor’s/Alexej Manvelov’s accent isn’t actually that noticeable to me but he sure does mumble from time to time On the plus side it is nice to watch a show and notice subtleties and acting choices instead of having my eyes glued to subtitles. I’ve never ranked my fave Nordic shows before but I would guess this one is top 5 for me.

Happy mid-December everyone!

[Tumlare]

Idk, if I knew I was not going to reach my goal regardless of how well I use the limited time I have for it each day, and by goal in this instance I mean "know Swedish really well, not need a dictionary nor subtitles etc.," maybe I would approach language learning a lot differently.

I want to give you some assurances as someone who is farther along my Swedish learning journey: You do not need to read 10,000 pages to get to the point where you don't need a dictionary nor do you need 1000 hours of listening to not need subtitles.

A lot of this depends on how you feel about ambiguity and what your definition of 'not needing a dictionary nor subtitles' is. In order to consider your goal reached, do you need to know the meaning of every single word in the entire book? If so, you will probably never reach your goal: native speakers only know a subsection of all the words that exist in their native language. That's the beauty of languages--there is always more to learn. Likewise, if your definition of not needing subtitles means catching every mumbled or whispered word in every film, well, that also isn't likely to happen (especially with modern trends in sound-mixing).

As long as your goals are more realistic than perfection, you will absolutely get there, and sooner than you think. Drawing on my own experience, I read my first novel without using a dictionary last year when I had only read 3000 pages. This year I've read several more without looking up a single word. Typically, I don't know somewhere between 0-4 words on a page, but this depends on the novel and whether the page is heavy on descriptions. Oftentimes the unknown word is something along the lines of "I understand that this is a plant, but not what type" or "I understand the emotional tenor of the scene, but I don't know what this adjective means exactly" as opposed a word that is critical to understanding the scene. And I have just crossed 8000 pages read today--still below your target of 10,000. I also listen to native language podcasts without transcripts (with a very high degree of comprehension) and I can watch movies and TV shows without subtitles (although how much of the dialog I can catch really depends on the mix...see the YouTube video above). I don't track my listening as thoroughly as my reading but I would estimate that I am still below 1000 hours of listening. We're all different and I have the advantage of living in Sweden. My goal here isn't to brag but rather to encourage you that this is doable even if you don't hit your arbitrary timeline. As long as you keep moving forward, you will get there.

I would encourage you to take a little bit of your study time and shift it from reading novels/watching TV to working through a good textbook. Textbooks are looked down upon by many hobby language learners, but I found that I made a large amount of progress going through a good textbook series which greatly improved my reading and listening skills (in my case I used the Rivstart A1 +A2; B1 + B2; and B2 + C1 textbooks and workbooks, among others).

[zac299]

Quality post tumlare

[koolawant4]

Seconded on the textbooks! I do about 20 minutes of textbook and 1-3 hours a day of reading/listening depending on my mood and that works perfectly for me. The grammar and words from the textbooks pop up all the time because now I know what I'm looking for.

Just doing 10 minutes of focused textbook work a day will make a hugeeeee difference, pinky promise.

I'm also approaching 10k pages (somewhere at 9k right now) and there's no doubt I'll need at least 3x more pages to get where I'm trying to go. It's taken me somewhere like 6 years to get this first 10k, but it all snowballs. I read with so much more ease now that I have no doubt the number of read pages next year will explode, and it will take me months to accomplish what used to take me years. I'm not discouraged that I'm not a fluent reader after 10k pages like I was promised (I'm looking at you, forum members!) but curious to see how much better I can do the next 10k pages.

Like my diet and exercise, I realize that many things in life take some muking around before they explode in a good way. Sometimes I'll feel like I'm spinning wheels for years before I make noticeable progress seemingly all at once. But those months or years that I thought I spent 'spinning my wheels' were actually laying the necessary groundwork for that rapid expansion of knowledge and/or ability. I'm rambling here but I'm saying all this to say absolutely nothing is ever a waste of time, and as long as you are consistent or stubborn, you will be gobsmacked the day your brain finally finishes that bridge and links you to a new island.

You're doing a kickass job of staying consistent. Maintain the path and you'll impress yourself in a few months/years.

[wallflower]

Wow, thanks everyone for your contributions! Tumlare brought some great advice and different perspectives on goals and troubleshooting those goals, and koolawant4 also came with her experiences with a particularly challenging language and emphasized the importance of textbook study. I am sure these will be helpful insights for a lot of us.

I realize, though, that I have not transparently represented my history with Swedish in this log… but I don’t want to list out all the things I’ve already done/achieved with Swedish. It’s been over 10 years, I’ve read beyond 10,000 pages already, used textbooks, etc. And yes: I do have a high standard for what “knowing” something means. Higher than just knowing what’s going on.

This current challenge, which I adapted from the Super Challenge, is intended to be an intensive, consistency-mandatory project, because consistency is what I haven’t done yet. Big targets + limited time frame = bust out of the intermediate plateau, or at least that’s what I’m hoping.

My main challenges are being an adult with adult life obligations that often mean I can’t put >3 hours/day into Swedish, as well as mental health stuff that also trips me up. Honestly the latter also probably drives me to achieve more and more. I know if I were a different type of learner I would have felt “done” with Swedish a few thousand pages ago and started collecting another language. I look at when other people check a language off their list and they haven’t even done half of what I have with Swedish, which is probably another thing I need to keep in mind: I’m doing something else over here that is my own thing, I’m can’t compare how I’m working to how others are working, because what I’m working towards looks a lot different to what other people are working towards.