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Elenia
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1888
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Location: London
Languages: English (N), Swedish (C1), French (Massively Atrophied) German (lowly beginner, somehow learnt to read)


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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby Elenia » Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:20 am

Morgana wrote:My knowledge of English grammar isn't that extensive, and that's ok for the most part because Swedish is so similar. But subclauses and word order in them have been confusing me for a while.


I have the exact same problem. I don't have a single Swedish grammar (that I know of, although I probably have one in digital format lurking somewhere) and have tried learning it through different web resources. I understand why it happens when I see it, but whenever I put it in action my boyfriend corrects me. I need to better learn what a subclause actually is!

Glad you got through the problem early :) now every time you see it, you will reinforce the correct and natural uses.
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jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Jul 03, 2017 4:42 pm

Don't be afraid to ask questions - I might have answers. :)
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Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
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Elenia
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1888
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Location: London
Languages: English (N), Swedish (C1), French (Massively Atrophied) German (lowly beginner, somehow learnt to read)


Finnish?!
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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby Elenia » Mon Jul 03, 2017 7:04 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:Don't be afraid to ask questions - I might have answers. :)


Does this include me? Because I really don't understand subclauses...
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:02 pm

Sure! Give me a shout in your own log/a specific grammar thread/PM/whatever (just so Morgana's log won't be filled with my confusing explanations ;) ).
1 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

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blaurebell
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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby blaurebell » Sun Jul 09, 2017 7:37 am

Morgana wrote:1. I hate Anki. I hate flashcards in general. I've always known this, but when you aren't in the mood to do anything... I'm putting a time limit per day for Anki. No more trying to catch up if my cards are all piling up. They can wait. I'll survive.


I hate anki, so I don't use it, because my brain tends to want to forget any uncomfortable experience. I love reading, so I pick up my vocabulary from intensive reading with LWT. Problem solved! :D

Morgana wrote:I feel like that's a bad thing to admit, that I don't want to speak, but I'm also indifferent about it. Like so what, it's my language journey, why am I comparing myself to others or worrying about not being good enough in a particular area I'm not that interested in.


Just like for you speaking isn't a priority for me with most languages. I only really need German, English and Spanish right now, so that's the only language where I put time into active skills. It's perfectly fine to focus on passive skills only. That said, if you want to read a lot, it's better to have the pronunciation in place beforehand, so that it all translates to listening comprehension later on. Otherwise you might hurt your listening comprehension with your own bad subvocalisation of the language while reading. So, you were definitely not wasting your time!

Morgana wrote:3. Following on from #2, I don't have goals for Swedish! So I've been doing a lot of things in a semi-haphazard way. Primarily it's been my motivation to finish courses that has been driving me forward. That's no goal to have. I have to be careful here though, with setting goals, because things tend to fall apart very quickly if I start to feel too stressed out about them.


Of course that's a goal and a good one at that! PM proved with his focus on courses in French that it's a great strategy to get to excellent production skills. He got enviable writing and speaking scores in his B2 exam thanks to doing a gazillion courses. If finishing your courses motivates you, that's pretty great! Personally I have a tendency to abandon courses as soon as they served their purpose, because most of the time I only want to consume native content and nothing else. Assimil tends to get abandoned about halfway through as soon as I can start reading with a dictionary.

I don't think goals need to be very stressful or have a deadline. I tend to have goals like reading or watching certain things in the original. My list for French is this: Camus, Jules Verne, Foucault, Céline, Perec, Simondon and Derrida. I've done the first two and could do Foucault if I had the time, but the rest is still too crazy for me, since it's inventive with the language or quite difficult from a philosophical perspective, which means that I need lots of precision. For Russian the goal is Lukyanenko, Strugatsky, War and Peace and all the Mosfilm movies that are on youtube. And if I were to learn Swedish I'd be happy with Astrid Lindgren, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson.
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: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
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blaurebell
Blue Belt
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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby blaurebell » Mon Jul 10, 2017 9:03 am

Ah sorry, it seems I misunderstood you a little on your course goals :oops: Personally I simply can't do grammar heavy courses in the beginning, it's one way to sap all motivation from me. Grammar drilling is simply not a good strategy for my goals. I want to understand fast and for this I don't need to be able to produce the grammar correctly, I only need to recognise it. So, if I drill grammar, that actually slows me down. Usually I just grab an Assimil course and do 100XP a day Duolingo and that gives me enough of on overview over all the grammar. And after about half the Duolingo tree I can start reading with a dictionary. Duolingo only expects minimal production, so it's really mostly comprehension, and you don't have to do the active wave of Assimil either.

There doesn't seem to be an English base Swedish Assimil course, which is a shame. Otherwise I'd recommend replacing FSI with Assimil, if you don't want to speak right now anyway. FSI courses are great for developing production, but they are boring and drill every little bit of grammar detail ad nauseam. Unless you want to speak really well, it's probably too much unnecessary torture. For comprehension Assimil is definitely the better choice. There is a French base Assimil Swedish course that is supposed to be really good, but I'm not sure whether that's of any use to you. One of the reasons why I learned French was actually to be able to use all the French based Assimil courses! Although I never finish Assimil courses, I actually love them. It's a great method and a good start for any language. And usually the cultural information in them is spot on. The Russian Assimil course actually taught me a couple of things about Russian culture that I didn't know and I'm half Russian! And the audio is great material for shadowing too.

But well, you can also replace FSI with Duolingo. I'm generally not a big fan of Duolingo when used on its own. It's nothing more than an overview, doesn't require much production, lots of the vocabulary is somewhat useless, the sentences are usually idiotic and so on. All these negatives actually make it such a good choice for a quick overview though. It's precisely useful because it's not thorough at all and because you don't actually have to worry about remembering all the vocabulary. The sentences are artificial enough so that you focus mainly on the structure rather than the content, vocabulary, etc. And if there is too much of a gap between real sentences and Duolingo sentences, then Clozemaster can help bridge that gap. So, maybe that's a better strategy to get to a broader focus as quickly as possible. You can return to FSI when you actually have a reason to develop your production skills. It's also much less straining to do all the drills when you already understand all the vocabulary and have developed a certain feeling for correct usage from native material. My usual strategy is Assimil+Duolingo+intensive reading, and I tend to abandon all courses after two months to focus on reading. Then follow a couple of Super Challenges worth of native material and only then do I even think about activating the language with Michel Thomas, Pimsleur and/or FSI if I want. We learn best when we're having fun, so why torture myself if it doesn't even fit my goals?

By the way, you're in such a lucky position with Swedish anyway, I simply *loved* Astrid Lindgren books when I was a child! In most languages children's books are stupid, so I usually start with translations of Young Adult novels rather than children's books, but Astrid Lindgren stories are intelligent enough to be enjoyed by adults as well. Even thinking about those stories gives me Swedish wanderlust! My favourite is Bröderna Lejonhjärta, but all of them are really fun!
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: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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Elenia
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1888
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 1:22 am
Location: London
Languages: English (N), Swedish (C1), French (Massively Atrophied) German (lowly beginner, somehow learnt to read)


Finnish?!
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=708
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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby Elenia » Tue Jul 11, 2017 11:26 am

I'm pretty late to the party, but I thought I would add my voice anyway. When I first started learning Swedish, I was interested in developing my receptive skills. In fact

HTLAL Elenia wrote:For Swedish, I'm focusing on developing passive skills, in particular my reading comprehension. It would be nice to be able to speak, but at this moment I'd rather understand.


Of course I'm a special case and in the very next post I was writing about trying to learn to sing a song (which was the most production I did in those days). You've done work on phonemes. The FSI recordings and native content will do the rest for you. If you do at any point decide you want to speak, you'll have all the groundwork laid out for you and a good ear to self correct with.

And jumping into things is how I got started with Swedish. The first thing I ever did was buy a novel by Swedish horror writer John Ajvide Lindqvist and look up every single word with google translate. I kept that up only for as long as I enjoyed it. I've not completed a single course, although I always feel I should go back and at least try.

As for recommendations: you've probably seen all of these mentioned in my log, but here goes.

Of Astrid Lindgren, I have only read (and listened to) the Pippi Långstrump [Pippi Longstocking] stories and Mio, min Mio - which I loved. I also love all the short stories I have read by Tove Jansson. My favourite book by her is Sommarboken. I also like her Mumin comics, although I've only read them in English. The cartoon was available on youtube, last I checked, and is pretty easy to follow. The pronunciation is Fennosvensk but it won't hinder your understanding. It's good for when you just need a good dose of cute.

Moving up in age, I like the Engelfors series of young adult books by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren. They're - again - easy to follow and quite readable (I found!) Last year we had a forum read-along of Siri Pettersen's Ravenrings series which is originally Norwegian. It was very popular in Sweden as well and - plus point - it is cheaper to buy the Swedish translation here in London than the Norwegian originals. It has no English translation as yet, which is why I include it. My boyfriend likes Nene Orme's Udda Verklighet which is urban fantasy set in Malmö. I am less of a fan but it is written in easy to follow language.

For teens but with a more complex written style is Kaninhjärta by Christin Ljungqvist. I really enjoy the language in that but her sentences and usages are non-standard - definitely erring on the side of the flowery. And my final recommendation (for here and now) is Is by Ulla Lena Lundberg. I have only heard the start of it in Swedish, and have read half of it in English translation as I got it cheaply in the bookshop where I worked. I would definitely recommend it. I can't make comments on the language, but the story is lovely.
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blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
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Re: Morgana lär sig svenska?!

Postby blaurebell » Fri Jul 14, 2017 11:17 am

Good decisions all around! This whole stress and health thing totally kills me too, I always have to make sure I don't overdo it! Luckily tracking my hours really doesn't affect me badly, as long as I don't try to maximise hours of "intensive studying". I actually built in some colour coded warnings into my spread sheet: If I study more than an hour of grammar or courses, the field turns red. I should probably also introduce some rule for reading with more than 15% unknown words. So basically I always try to maximise fun activities like reading and listening once I've pushed through the comprehension barrier, but I try not to study "properly" too much.
1 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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mick33
Orange Belt
Posts: 139
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2015 6:39 am
Location: Lakewood, Washington, USA
Languages: First language: English
Languages I'm focusing on learning now: Italian.
Languages I'm learning but not focusing on: Afrikaans, Polish, Finnish Turkish, Spanish, Swedish, Catalan, Hungarian, Russian.
Just for fun I sometimes learn a little of: Hindi, Japanese, Indonesian, Georgian, Thai etc.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=762
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Re: ...in which it turns into a music post.

Postby mick33 » Sun Jul 16, 2017 2:55 am

Morgana wrote:Still hanging in there. Barely. The last couple of study sessions have felt like I was out of my body somewhere else for them tbh. I should probably have gotten the hint when I started listening to the Linguaphone dialog and couldn't make sense of it. I mean, that would be my first clue that it is a Bad Day to try to study. :roll:

Since I'm not up to much else, I've just been listening to Swedish music. Lots and lots of Swedish music. That's sort of studying, right? :lol:

It's been a lot of Kent. They're a big reason I ever bothered to learn Swedish. I have slowly been working through their discography with lyrics in parallel text format and with a touch of sadness I finished today. That's it. No more Kent lyric discoveries.

That's a lot of songs, but it's my log :P (Like last time, anyone feels like posting some Swedish music this is an open invitation :) )


I agree that listening to music is definitely a "kind" of studying :lol:!
I also think listening to more Swedish music is always a good idea :D, so here's some more songs I really like:


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jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
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Re: Re-focused.

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Jul 24, 2017 3:29 pm

Morgana wrote:Are there any Swedes (or anyone else) who know of a dictionary that gives the phonetic spelling of words in Swedish? It doesn't matter if it's online/offline/physical book, if it's paid or free. I prefer free and online, but I'm open to anything.


This will probably work as an offline resource - Svenska språknämndens uttalsordbok 67 000 ord i svenskan och deras uttal (by Claes Garlén).

"Uttalsuppgifterna anges med det internationella fonetiska alfabetet, IPA. Ordboken blir på så sätt mer användbar utomlands än om något annat, svenskt, system hade använts. IPA är också det system som normalt används i läromedel för t.ex. engelska, franska och tyska, liksom i de flesta större ordböcker."

... which means that IPA is used.
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Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

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