{"id":621,"date":"2015-05-17T14:40:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T12:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soniasvikt.org\/?p=621"},"modified":"2015-05-17T14:40:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T12:40:44","slug":"studying-in-swedish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.soniasvikt.org\/?p=621","title":{"rendered":"Studying in Swedish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Near the start of this year at the Eric Sahlstr\u00f6m Institute, I discussed what it is like to study in another language<\/a>. (My native language is English and I am studying music entirely in Swedish.) This is an update on how it has been.<\/p>\n

\"images\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had hoped and expected to be much better at understanding and speaking Swedish by this time at the end of the course. I understand a lot of written and spoken Swedish at this point, but there is nearly always something I don’t understand. I still have difficulty with regional accents, especially Sk\u00e5ne, and muffled speech. Also, I remain uncomfortable and slow at speaking. I dream often in Swedish, so I think my unconscious mind knows much more Swedish than my conscious mind can use.<\/p>\n

My learning curve was strong at the beginning, but somewhere along the way I stalled out. It was around February-March, maybe when my boyfriend and I broke up, or when I got overtired. Perhaps I am being too hard on myself about this, but I had higher expectations and it has been a source of frustration to continue to struggle so\u00a0much.<\/p>\n

When I visited Paris I noted that I remain more fluent in French than in Swedish, despite not having used French in years. I learned French when I was in high school and read many books in French and spoke with some fluency (including during\u00a0a several month trip to Switzerland) during that time. When I struggle for words, French still sometimes\u00a0comes up rather than Swedish (although sometimes it goes the other way and Swedish pops out when I want French). It could be age-related; I was young when I learned French, now not so young.<\/p>\n

\"images\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another possible reason why I didn’t get better than this is that I didn’t make enough of an effort to speak. I have recently learned that struggling is important and practicing retrieval of new knowledge is really key to learning. But I stayed\u00a0away from blurting out bad attempts at speaking Swedish, keeping\u00a0quiet when I should have been practicing speech. We had a very international group this year. Out of 14 of us living in the annex full time, 8 are not native Swedish speakers, so English was spoken most of the time (4\u00a0of the 8\u00a0are native English speakers).<\/p>\n

I think many of the things I learned here this year will be further consolidated and processed after I go home. That will certainly be true of all the tunes and techniques I have learned on nyckelharpa, and with music theory and arrangement, and likely also true of Swedish language. I will continue to study it, including finishing reading Pippi L\u00e5ngstrump (Longstocking) that I began here. And I’ll be back in Sweden in July, with more opportunities to listen and speak!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Near the start of this year at the Eric Sahlstr\u00f6m Institute, I discussed what it is like to study in another language. (My native language is English and I am …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning","category-regular-post"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t