Resources & Tips to Boost Your Swedish Skills
Abroad and in Sweden
I won’t lie: When I started learning Swedish, I thought the pronunciation was funny and impossible to learn (the latter turned out to be a myth). As I had started learning the language mostly by coincidence and curiosity, I long lacked the motivation to learn Swedish properly. However, two years of starting Swedish courses, I moved to Sweden for an English master’s program.
Hearing the North Germanic language around me every day finally made me discover its beauty. I believe every language learner eventually falls in love with the language they’re learning because the act of learning a language feels like appropriating it. The language inevitably becomes part of you.
Now that I’ve been living here for soon two years, I can sell movie tickets in Swedish, watch TV shows without subtitles, eavesdrop on conversations and write emails that “get my message across”. I recently even had a three-hour conversation with a retired Swedish backpacker on my train journey from Germany to Sweden — the proud peak of my Swedish learning curve.
Part I of this text is about practice tips abroad, part II addresses what you can do in Sweden, and part III gives you some general language learning hacks that worked for me.
