Come January this will probably become a Swedish learning log, but for the moment I just need a place to organize my book club planning so I can easily reference it. Maybe also templates and random Discourse things I’ve gotten tired of Googling each time I forget. Maybe it will be useful to other people over time. Feel free to come chat. The future has come!
Quick FAQ
What is this: Whatever I feel like posting really, but mostly stuff about either Japanese or Swedish that I feel like sharing Why am I studying Japanese: Shits and giggles, but also for mystery novels Why am I studying Swedish:Shits and giggles, but also for mystery novels On Hiatus How is my Japanese: I can talk to people and read books. Life is good. How is my Swedish: I can neither talk to people nor read books yet
I’m adding onto that an Advent challenge of short stories, thoughts for stories for me to read. denotes slightly longer works (but still short stories):
It’s still a bit nebulous but I’m going to take what I found worked for me in Japanese and apply it to Swedish which means roughtly:
Anki basic vocab from the start. I have a deck of just under 11k cards and I don’t expect to finish it before I can start poking through written material
Learn basic grammar. I’ll probably get this since it’s cheap and seems well recommended.
Start reading basically as soon as possible, paired with audiobooks where available.
There are some A1/2 books (basically graded readers) for Swedish learners but I’m honestly not afraid to go for B level books while at an A level because my tolerance for lookups is pretty high.
Essentially my plan is: basics then jump into books
While I’ve so far liked every Swedish person I’ve met, not a single one of them didn’t already speak English at a high level, so I’m not really going to focus on speaking it, at least for now. Output is pretty exhausting for me so I’ll be saving that energy for Japanese
Oh i’m not actually learning it. I was just hanging out with probably the (only?) two Faroese people in Seoul last weekend and they were dropping some phrase on me. The Faroe Islands are a very small island group northeast of Britain… autonomous region, but under Denmark.
This is the biggest issue with Northern European languages. Everyone speaks English so well!
I can see value if I were to live there. Navigating government documents, being more accepted, etc. Also if it’s a family or romantic connection. But as it stands I’m planning to stay in my country and consume Nordic Noir
Unless they are Finnish… then German is a better bet… at least that was my experience… no English to be found but in a supermarket the cashier was so happy he could practice his German with us.
I just remembered something relating to this - I’ll be modifying these cards heavily. Adding pictures, gifs, example sentences, etc as I go through to make sure things stick.
movies on youtube (legal). maybe I’ll make this into a pretty resource at some point, but right now it’s just for my own reference and others might find it helpful as is.
I put the legal youtube movies/short films into a table, but there’s now 75(!) of them and I keep finding more so I may need to find some better way to organize them
I’ve considered something like Google sheets, but I do like having them all visible on the forum without having to click out.
edit: maybe I’ll take out the ones I’ve already watched/rated and put them in a different table in a different post
I would like to improve my spontaneous Japanese and kind of ‘get out of my head’ when it comes to producing sentences. I tend to freeze up or overthink things, especially when I’m talking to new people. I also struggle to fluidly put complex thoughts into words in a way that satisfies me when I’m having live conversations.
I have a goal of 30 hours of Japanese conversation in December. To put this number in perspective, I had 113 hours of conversation practice last year and only 24 so far this year. So really, this will bring me up to less than half of last year’s total, but it should still give me a noticeable boost after slacking so much on production this year.
To reach this hour goal and also to try to break my ‘fear of talking to new people in Japanese’ I’m going to be talking to a variety of new tutors on italki, and possibly other platforms (might even throw in a language exchange event or two, who knows).
I was told it might be fun for me to report on my progress here, so I’m going to try to do that. I’m not yet sure what this will look like to be honest. If you have thoughts on that, please let me know. I won’t be disclosing who I talk with on which days for privacy reasons, but if a tutor seems great I might shout them at the end of the challenge.
Also, if you have a particular tutor you like feel free to recommend them, either here or in DM if that’s more comfortable.
As someone who also struggles with getting out of my head in live conversations, I’m looking forward to following your progress. I don’t know if you’re looking for just informal practice or more structured classes, but I’ve been eyeing the curated classes from Meshclass Japanese like this one: 勉強した日本語を会話で使ってみよう！. I’ve found their YouTube videos to be incredibly helpful and well-thought out. They approach things not just from the angle of “let’s learn this list of grammar points!” but focus more on how to give natural responses in given situations. The syllabi for their classes seem thoughtfully done as well, and I think the price per hour is comparable to experienced professional teachers on iTalki. Just thought I’d share in case it’s helpful!
I’ve actually taken classes with her in the past! I was thinking of maybe revisiting it if the scheduling worked out (I could just carry lessons over into January if needed I suppose). I know if I can articulate a particular situation I want to roleplay or topic I want to hammer down the grammar on, she’s great at that. I think for my main worry is I’ll settle into ‘safety’ with a few known tutors and not really challenge myself - especially as those lessons are bought in batches
Oh, really? That’s awesome. Can I ask which class you took, and how the lessons were structured? I wish they had just a little more info on the website.
denotes slightly longer works (but still short stories):
. Definitely would be a different sort of challenge.
