From Thursday to yesterday, I was on a trip to Sweden with a pal, staying at a hotel in Stockholm. While we largely stuck to that city, we took a trip to the city of Malmö on Saturday, primarily to see the bridge featured in the drama series The Bridge and to explore the area in general.
I was advised before visiting the country that English is widely spoken there as a second language. Conversely, it tends to be the norm in the English-speaking world that we don’t learn supplemental languages, with the possible exception of French in Canada. Still, I was determined to break away from the typical tourist stereotype, so I embarked on learning some useful phrases.
My first purchase was a Berlitz phrase book from Oxfam, which was originally published around 1990 and has an accompanying cassette. It’s great as a pocket reference guide, and it sometimes proved to be the quickest and most authoritative way to find the right phrase. Amusingly, some sections haven’t aged well, including how to ask for an ashtray and giving advice about where to have photos developed.
I’ve also employed more modern resources. For one, there’s an app called Clozemaster. This presents sentences with one word blanked out, and – as the name suggests – you need to close the gap. Additionally, Microsoft Translator offers free but powerful interpreting, including optical character recognition for printed text, and speech-to-text for parroting an overheard phrase.
To gain a feel for the language in general, I’ve been tuning into a speech radio station called SR P1, which is similar to BBC Radio 4 in its mixture of news, documentaries and occasionally comedy.
After three months of preparation, how did this work out ‘in the wild’? Well, the results are mixed.
For meeting people in enclosed spaces like shops or trains, it’s been useful to have a few stock words on hand, including: hej (hello), tack (thank you) and förlåt (sorry). Transactional conversations can usually be conducted with phrases such as Jag vill… (I want…) and Det har (This here) while pointing in the right direction.
In the last case, there are grammatical rules about genders and plurals that I’ve yet to master, but these weren’t a hindrance for such short conversations. Besides, people rarely speak in full sentences except for formal contexts.
I knew before I arrived, however, that my listening skills were limited. When I’m tuned into the radio, it takes a few minutes to figure out the topic of conversation, with most of the words bypassing me.
There were a couple of conversations where I opened with Talar du engelska? (Do you speak English?) because I knew my question would be too complex to explain in Swedish. The one time I should have deployed this was when the security scanners at Stockholm Arlanda airport started beeping at me. In my defence, it’s hard to think what to say in any language when uniformed personnel are telling you something at 100mph – or 160kph for my European readers.
By contrast, my pal hadn’t been learning the language and always initiated conversations in English. I was consistently impressed by the ability of the other party to switch immediately.
The learning was most useful for reading signs and directions. The larger transport hubs contained bilingual signage, and some staff even greeted us in English. However, self-service tills and kiosks are quite common in Sweden, and not all of them have a language selection button. In these cases, it’s been useful to know words like inte to indicate a negative and avbryt to cancel an action.
It’s been doubly helpful that Swedish has a similar word order to English. Some phrases even map word-for-word, and I’ve found it harder to grasp when they break away from that format.
The big question is whether to keep up the learning after the need for it has passed. At the moment, I’m considering keeping it up.
Figures aren’t readily available for how many native Anglophones have Swedish in their back pockets, suggesting the figure is low or negligible. Maybe it’s because around three-quarters of Swedes have some level of English proficiency, so there’s little practical need, but I would find it appealing to be one of this assumed minority.
One reason I chose Clozemaster over the more popular Duolingo is that it doesn’t pressure you to maintain a streak, even though I have actually maintained one by consistently completing sets each morning. The free version offers up to 30 sentences per day, up to ten of which can be listening practice.
And I reckon listening will be key to progress, as well as nailing the prepositions, conjunctions and genders. Speaking with a native regularly would help me move forward, but the closest I can find right now is the aforementioned SR P1.
One unexpected discovery is a programme on the station called Tolvslaget. This is broadcast at 12pm Swedish time, which is 11am in the UK, and features a recording of a church clock striking 12, followed by a different poem every day. On the days when I’m working from home, this sets me up perfectly for morning break.
Gavin Cameron 