Swedish for immigrants

School's out - for this year, at least!
The last three months I've spent a lot of time on learning Swedish. I started in September with a course in Folkuniversitet as I couldn't start straight away here in the local Sfi-courses, that are free for people moving to Sweden.
There I started in October, and as I wanted to make progress more quickly, I continued going to Folkuniversitet. So I ended up having courses every day for a few weeks, what kept me quite busy.

It was interesting with all these different people in these courses. I was always very curious to hear why they had come to Sweden and how they feel about living here. I was astonished about how many people from all over the world actually have fallen in love with Swedish people and decided to come to live here. Like me, with the only difference that my sambo (swedish for "living-together-with-person") is not Swedish ;-)
Anyway, it seemed as a lot of them have to cope with even more changes than I have to, coming from countries in Afrika or Asia. One guy from Sambia was about to see the first snow in his life...
I learned very soon, that I have quite an advantage with German and English in the background. I can deduce a lot of Swedish words from German, and English too, and some Grammar rules are quite similar. Not for the people coming from Thailand, China or Sambia, that's for sure. A lot of them need to learn another alphabet first of course, what makes it certainly much more different to learn a new language. And then the pronounciation - even more tricky. First of all for the people from Southeast Asia, they struggle really hard. I was pretty sure before, that this was only a rumour, that Asian people are not able to pronounce a proper 'r', but saying 'l'. I was often sitting next to a Thai girl in one of my courses who I could barely understand. Until I figured out that I have to replace some of the 'l's with 'r's in her words. ;-)

As I eventually started with the Sfi-course, I felt already a bit advanced, at least compared to many of my classmates. I had a few weeks "introduction course" until they divided the people in our group in different levels. I could join all the courses in the highest level of difficulty and after three weeks I did a test, some kind of pre-test for the nationellt prov, that is the completion of this course. This test was supposed to be one week later, but I wasn't expecting to be ready for that. But as the first test went so well, I thought I could give it a try.
It was a written part including an listening comprehension part for several hours and an oral part, that worried me most.
But I did well :-) No mistakes in the written part and the oral part was not bad either.
I basically run through the whole Sfi-course in four weeks. Not bad I guess, compared to others who spend there months or even years. I had almost the feeling I became some kind of a "model-immigrant" because of my successful studies. Several times I could hear my name in combination with the words "nationellt prov" and "noll fel" and "jätteduktigt" (= very good) ;-)

However, that have been some further steps in my learning-Swedish-project. I am about to get a feeling for the language and I understand already quite a lot. But it's not enough. I am planning to continue my courses in the middle of February, when we come back from Asia. Until then, I have to make sure, that I won't forget half of what I learned so far again. Therefore a Swedish book is already on my list of the things to pack and Richard and I should plan a daily Swedish hour during our trip.