Oh my head hurts!
Day 2 of the Berlitz Total Immersion was a battle today, well it was ok in the morning. I slept well, got up early was there nice and keen but after lunch it was as if my brain said ok enough language learning! To make matters worse it was a double lesson, i.e a three way conversation eek! Having two attractive Swedish women giving you attention for 45 mins may seem fun to most of you male readers but when you are having to fight mental fatigue and sound enthusiastic well it aint so pretty.
Again a bastard of a subject to start us off today…Swedish prepositions.
This is an important element of perfecting Swedish, mainly because some of the rules are flaky. When do you use ‘på’ and not ‘i’ for example.
Swedish has seventy different prepositions and fifteen are amongst the most common words in the language!
Even the Swedes find it difficult why you say på instead of i or vice versa!
Then it was on to comparatives, this can be a tricky customer as well! lite, mindre, minst,,,den minsta pojken..as a student of Latin all be it a long time ago now I like rules and there are rules with comparatives but its also got a few naughty irregulars throw in…
gammal, äldre, äldst..den äldsta pojken….and a lot more
We did do a lot of conversational stuff today as well. I had to come up with 15 nyckelord..keywords about my job and give a presentation around that and take questions. Also we played a trivial pursuit type game which was interesting as you have to listen intently to the questions.
I like the way they break up the day with themes. We discussed food and meals and they brought in some actual foodstuffs and we went through the ingredients etc
They seem to be pleased with my progress but its hard for me to judge but there were too good signs today….I rang the office and spoke to a colleague all in Swedish,rather subconsciously…he was rather surprised…I had to meet someone for a quick fika and left them a voicemail på svenska again without really realising.
One of the teachers said Wednesday is the day the Berlitz Total Immersion students find the hardest. Not what I need to hear and not what I want to think about when the big hand strikes six tomorrow morning…I will tell myself that Wednesday is the best day.
Jag är jättetrött så måste jag säger natt natt!
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{ 7 comments }
Can you ask your teachers how they define fluency. I think this would be an interesting topic for a blog entry since many people describe themselves as fluent (its the big goal of any language learner) despite having the vocabulary and writing skills of a dyslexic 4 year old. I’d be interested in finding out what the professionals say.
Best of luck with the course.
Dave,
Yes it is indeed a good question. Incidentally what language do you dream in?
Here is the Berlitz take on language proficiency. You have a fair idea of my Swedish and they said I was Level 3
http://www.berlitznordic.com/1-143-levels.html
This pretty much falls in line with the ‘Common European Framework’
More on that here:
http://www.berlitznordic.com/1-261-common-european-framework.html
Prepositions in Swedish is stupid. Apparently saying that an event occured “på Globen” is grammatically correct. Of course, no one has ever actually seen anyone play ice hockey or sing on the top of Globen. In fact, it would be rather suicidal to attempt such a thing.
It’s called “i Globen” just as its called “i Hovet”.
Hammarby obviously plays “på Söderstadion” however. Theres an obvious lack of roof there…
I dream in Swedish sometimes but I’m not sure its much of an indicator of anything. I still dream in German from time to time and I’ve forgotten just about all of that language despite having done a fairish job of learning it when I lived in Hamburg in the 1990s.
Joakim: it’s i Globen and på Hovet.
“Jag är jättetrött så måste jag säger natt natt!” should’ve been “Jag är jättetrött så jag måste säga natti natti” (but natti natti is only, if even then, used when talking to small children).
Good point Emma, in fact today my infamous rag was nearly lost over word order. As mentioned before I am very Germanic in terms of my approach to grammar and the Berlitz way of repeat it enough and it will stick with certain aspects doesnt always work with me.
So today I asked them to actually explain Swedish word order for me and I think I had made it more complicated than it is. As you say above…the bisats doesnt need to which I thought it did..what did throw me though was the ‘inte’ t.ex Jag ar domare eftersom jag inte spelar football så bra….so the inte goes before the verb…
Emma: no, på Globen is apparently grammatically correct. Hovet also have a clear abundance of roofing so that becomes i, not på.
Kind of similar is when people say for example “Han kom tvåa på OS”. Im getting nuts over that one as well!
På is used way to much in Swedish, it just sounds stupid. “På olympiska spelen”, bah!
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