Picking up a new language from scratch!

Fluorescence

Something I've been thinking about for a while is learning a new language, particularly a Nordic one, and I was wondering if you could give me some tips on how to start off. At the moment I'm thinking either Swedish or Norwegian. Which would you all recommend (open to other ideas too!). I know a reasonable amount of french, and a minuscule amount of italian and spanish, and want to get away from the latin languages a bit. I've always had a fondness for Scandinavian countries so a Nordic language seemed an obvious choice :pac:.

Is there any books, courses or online resources you all found particularly useful when starting off (I'm based in Dublin btw)? Or even a few I should stay clear of :pac:. I don't mind learning independently for a while, but I'd really need a lot of spoken language practice so I'm thinking a class or group of some description would be a great help. It's always the oral aspects of language I find tricky to learn!

Lastly, any interesting tidbits about learning a Nordic language? How tough or easy do you think it will be for an English speaker to adapt to?

Ellis Dee

fluorescence wrote: »

Something I've been thinking about for a while is learning a new language, particularly a Nordic one, and I was wondering if you could give me some tips on how to start off. At the moment I'm thinking either Swedish or Norwegian. Which would you all recommend (open to other ideas too!). I know a reasonable amount of french, and a minuscule amount of italian and spanish, and want to get away from the latin languages a bit. I've always had a fondness for Scandinavian countries so a Nordic language seemed an obvious choice :pac:.

Is there any books, courses or online resources you all found particularly useful when starting off (I'm based in Dublin btw)? Or even a few I should stay clear of :pac:. I don't mind learning independently for a while, but I'd really need a lot of spoken language practice so I'm thinking a class or group of some description would be a great help. It's always the oral aspects of language I find tricky to learn!

Lastly, any interesting tidbits about learning a Nordic language? How tough or easy do you think it will be for an English speaker to adapt to?

I believe Swedish is probably the easiest foreign language for an English speaker to learn. There are practically no verb declensions or noun conjugations and the syntax is also fairly close to that of English. as with most other languages, idioms have to be learnt one-by-one. Pronunciation is likewise not too difficult. Norwegian (there are actually two languages) is fairly close to Swedish. I am fluent in Swedish, which means I can usually understand a Norwegian - or even Danish - newspaper well.

Fluorescence

That's quite helpful, thank you . I was leaning toward Swedish to start with anyway, so I think I shall go for that one. Any tips for classes or online courses are always welcome

Ellis Dee

fluorescence wrote: »

That's quite helpful, thank you . I was leaning toward Swedish to start with anyway, so I think I shall go for that one. Any tips for classes or online courses are always welcome

You could try this:

http://www.onlineswedish.com/main.php

Just Google with words like "online" + "Swedish" + "course", and so on, and you'll probably find a lot of stuff.

The pronunciation is different, but not too hard: Borg is pronounced borry, berg berry, gin yin, and so on.

The verb to be is "jag är" (yag eh) I am, du är (you are) han är (he is), hon är (hunn eh) she is, vi är (we are) ni är (youse are), dom är (they are) ...

Same with all verbs, the same in singular or plural for all persons.

Good luck! (Lycka till)

Here's a link to a Swedish paper.

http://www.expressen.se/

The headline reads: Drev barnhem och förgrep sig på barn and means

"Ran children's home and molested children"

Looks like we in Ireland are not the only ones that are into that kind of stuff, eh?:eek:

Fluorescence

Seemingly not :eek:

Thanks for the links and the tips! Think I'm a while off newspapers yet though :pac:. Found some videos on youtube of how to pronounciate all the different swedish sounds though, so I think I'll try to get that down first and then move on to some basic vocab and grammar. I'm pretty excited so far

wonton

I started learning swedish awhile ago too, its definetly easy compared to other laguages if you speak english, so many words are just synonyms or alternative spellings of the word.

like happy is "glad" and stupid is "dum".


Swedish is also a good choice of nordic languages because it is has the most media influence in scandanavia in most things.


I would recomend watching some swedish movies and listening to some swedish music.

If you havent seen them yet the 3 millenium series movies are a great start.


as far as music maybe you could try melissa horn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG9Dqaq4vio

biko

See if you can get hold of children's books, should be easier language in them
Or Swedish comic books online http://www.svd.se/kultur/serier/

Ellis Dee

biko wrote: »

See if you can get hold of children's books, should be easier language in them
Or Swedish comic books online http://www.svd.se/kultur/serier/

Good idea.:)

Also worth considering would be to get hold of comics in both English and Swedish (Asterix, for example). Then you can try to read the Swedish one and check with the English version to find out things like "vildsvin" means "wild boar" (literally "wild swine"),and so on. Learning should be fun if possible.

http://swedecheese.blogspot.com/2007/01/asterix-p-svenska.html

By the way, if you ever go to Sweden and someone invites you to a party where the main attraction is "surströmming" - don't go!:eek: