to sweden the deal.

Our class sessions are becoming more and more frustrating for me.  When I am at home and talking to myself in Swedish and reading the dialogues aloud, I have no problem with my production and actually think my pronunciation is close to spot on.  Whenever, I approach the classroom, though, my mouth stops working and I start making mistakes that sound horrible even to me!  I don’t know why this happens, though I suspect a lack of confidence.  ALSO: When I am writing my homework assignments, it also takes twice the amount of time because I have to look up the spelling for all the words.  This lack of confidence is making me regress in my language production.  But the question then arises: how do I get more confidence without a lot of practice?

I think I am making some progress with my writing, although it is frustrating how little confidence I have with spelling.  I spent so much time going back and forth between Word and tyda.se to see if everything is spelled correctly and also looking up the double-check the supine forms, when I could be using this time to work on other aspects of writing or studying something else.  Plus, I am usually correct with the spelling/form anyway, but I am always doubting myself.

However, (as I mentioned), I do think that I am progressing, if only somewhat, as shown by the fact that I made a pun in Swedish in the article I handed in today.  I am interested to see whether the pun only works for me or if Eva will ´get it*´too.

* – used in quotes because the pun was on the word get which means goat in Swedish.

Class was frustrating today because I continuously keep forgetting the vocabulary that I learned over the summer.  Now I feel like I keep saying the same things over and over again.  “Jag glömde” especially.  I am having problems with the pronunciation of the long “a” and Eva keeps correcting me.  It is frustrating.  I think that I need to go back to the basics and start practicising individual sounds again.  Although I wonder if this will have any effect.

The word in Swedish for “get” is får and for some reason I had a difficult time getting this word (har har). I have asked at least one person in the last week, if not two, how to say “to get” in Swedish. Now, though, I use it and the other short, common verb that I sometimes had problems with tar, which primarily means “to take,” sometimes confused. The shortest words in a language are the most difficult to master, and I know that I will still make mistakes with these two words because semantically not every language utilizes the same verbs for the same actions (do you have a party or make a party?) but knowing that I I think I will use these words accurately a high percentage of the time allows me to not think about what I will say and just say it. Today and yesterday I found that after just spontaneously speaking, I was using these two words accurately without having to first think about every word that I was going to say and/or translate from English to Swedish.  Whether this is do the overanalysis of these two words in my head or the attention that I brought to them the one (or two) times I asked a colleague how to say “to get” in Swedish was the greater contributer to me having got the meaning, I cannot say.  I would say that the latter contributers more greatly to learning than the former.

We had our midterm exam today.  I know I did terribly on the supine form of certain words because I have barely been introduced to that form last school year.  Also I was trying to apply rules to the formation of the supine form instead of relying on what sounded right to me.  Not to imply that I have mastered the phonology of Swedish, but I think that sometimes that relying on what sounds right could sometimes prove better than relying on rules.  But it’s a gamble.

Today was a frustrating day because I spent the weekend talking mostly in English. Not because i really wanted to but because most of the people I was hanging out with are in the beginning level. However, I did speak to some guy on Friday night who told me that I should just to “stick to speaking English.” I will not let some jerk like that discourage me. However, I think that his comment was based on the fact that I kept putting the wrong stress on the word. That is a big problem with the way that I pronounce things, which I would like to correct sooner rather than later, but right now I want to get the right word and word order down first. I am being more persistent with speaking than I ever was with German at this stage. I had a wonderful conversation with a man who works at the kiosk around the corner. I pronounced the word for postcard with an extra ‘t’ in it (I think this was because I was so subconsciously happy that I remembered a T-word, I overcompensated) but then he continued on and congratulated me for trying to learn Swedish and doing such a good job with it. It really makes up for that jerk from Friday.

Anyway, I think I am learning words that are important and we are not learning much grammar that is very new to me. Today we did learn comparatives and were assigned body parts for homework.

OH, and I bought myself a dictionary today! I am glad that I waited and bought it here because it was something that was actually cheaper to buy here in Sweden!

Besides my utter lack of appropriate vocabulary (I keep feeling like I’m repeating myself…saying the same things over and over), my two biggest problems today were with the appropriate adjective endings for T-words and AGAIN not putting the main verb after the auxiliary one.  I keep noticing that I’m doing it before I actually finish my sentences so I say the main verb as soon as I realize I’m doing it or I try to start all over again.  It is quite frustrating, but since I am noticing this I hope that eventually I will be able to nip this problem in the bud. I have to study vocabulary words all weekend. Oh, and today I was asked to be the class representative. Of course I couldn’t say no.

So ends my third day in intensive Swedish.  We concentrated on pronouncing the vowels again today and I think I am improving.  I say this because the muscles in my mouth really hurt after six hours of speaking.  She described the hard and weak vowels as “främre” o. “bakre” which helps because I can think of where they are on the IPA chart and more or less automatically know which are front vowels and which are back.  I realized before that that was the difference between them but having used only “hard” and “soft” to distinguish them added that extra connection which my head could not handle.  Of course I made some mistakes again today but I think I`m finally conquering that problem I was having.

Also, again I did not substitute “und” for “och” !

I know that I am also having problems placing the main verb after the auxiliary verb (or the place adverb if that is the case) and am waiting and placing it at the end of the sentence as you would do in German.  I don`t have a problem with it in writing, I usually get all of the exercises that we write all correct, but in speaking, I tend to leave the main verb until later in the sentence.  I will try to concentrate more on that tomorrow.