Jag talar lite svenska; eller, Jag förstår inte

The title of this entry is "I speak a little Swedish; or, I don't understand." Those are the dual themes of me speaking Swedish here so far. I'm not pleased with how my language skills are progressing. It's hard, since practically everyone speaks perfect English, but I refuse to be an awful American who relies on English. I started my Swedish class the week before last and it's really fun, but Amanda had already taught me a lot of what we've done so far, and while it's wonderful that I can tell the time perfectly, that's not exactly a conversation I have during the day with Swedes. Similarly, while I can maybe order something or ask a basic question, it's pretty much a guarantee that I won't understand the response in Swedish, which makes me not want to ask in Swedish in the first place. That's where phrases like jag förstår inte, förlåt (sorry), tack, and på engelska come in.

On the positive side, I'm definitely getting much better at cold pronunciations, and I can almost say the bizarre "sj-" sound. The word for 7, for example, is "sju," and it sounds like a very strange cross between "whew" and "phew" and "hew." I am a pro at pronouncing most of the names of the T-bana stops since there's the automated woman's voice saying the names very slowly and deliberately before every stop. I'm comfortable with numbers now, so at least when they bring an order out at Vurma I know if it's mine or not. And, as I guess is usually the case, I can tell that my listening/understanding ability is progressing much faster than my speaking ability. It's always a tiny trimuph when I can pick out words other than "och" (and) and "jag" (I).

Watching TV is quite helpful, especially American shows with Swedish subtitles. Listening to Swedish indie bands is definitely not helpful since most of them sing in English, the universal language of indie/pop lyrics? But they do have super cute accents...

Aside from subway stations and other transportation phrases like whatever it is the woman says about watching the platform "när du stiger av" (when you get off), I'm also getting good at phrases on the computer since Reidar kept all the language settings in Swedish as part of his tough love strategy. Ones like "logga ut" and "mina dokument" are pretty self-explanatory, and then there's ones like "öppna i nytt fönster" (open in a new window), "spara nu" (save now), and "lösenord" (password), so at least I'll end up fluent in computer Swedish if nothing else. Reidar installed an awesome Swedish-English dictionary/thesaurus on my CHESS computer - it's a million times more helpful than my dictionary, and it gives me useful phrases like "jag förstår ingenting (av det hela)," or "I am completely at sea (at a loss)." Now there's one I can use.

Oh! And now, it also answered my earlier question about what you call someone from Stockholm - it's "Stockholmare."