How can one learn Swedish?

Hur kan man lära sig svenska?

Jag började plugga svenska. Anledingen till det var att jag gillar språk och svenska är som mitt språk, holländska. Vill du lära dig svenska, kan du följa mina aktiviteter.

Stick to whichever method you maintained in the past.

Don’t forget the most important advice when learning a language and choosing the ‘best method’

Six ways to learn Swedish

Enjoy learning Swedish

Even when writing this page, I’m enjoying it. I started to write it in Swedish actually:

Jag började plugga svenska. Anledingen till det var att jag gillar språk och svenska är som mitt språk, holländska. Vill du lära dig svenska, kan du följa mina aktiviteter.

Remember the most important thing for progress in your language learning:

Stick to whichever method you maintained in the past.

Don’t forget the most important advice when learning a language and choosing the ‘best method’

Short stories in Swedish

I read Short Stories in Swedish by Olly Richards. Like all booklets in the series, the Swedish version has about 200 pages of easily understanable short stories stories of about 3-4 pages each, highlighting the more difficult words and followed by 5 multiple choice questions about the read content.

For polyglots, this series can be particularly interesting as the stories are practically identical. I haven’t succeeded yet to make it a habit, but I enjoyed reading one story in several languages, s.a. Italian, Swedish and Russian. If you have similar polyglot aspirations, you could start by reading one story in a language you understand better already, before re-reading it in a newer language. Hopefully, that way you’ll understand and learn more words that you recognize from the stories you just read before.

Amazon.com: Short Stories in Swedish for Beginners (Teach Yourself): 9781529302745: Richards, Olly: Books

Watch Swedish vlogs

Erik Edler

I’ll have to start with one of my favourite Youtube channels to learn Swedish: Erik Edler. He is funny, charming and his approach is practical just going through colloquial language in an unconventional way.

As he doens’t have a playlist I listed Erik’s ten video’s to learn Swedish below:

SVENSKA FÖR ALLA

The channel SVENSKA FÖR ALLA shows basic dialogues in easy Swedish about things such as a ordering or wordlist around the topic of Fika, useful vocabulary when going to the supermarket or the interior of an apartment Lägenhet och möbler – YouTube

Slow Swedish with Katrin Berndt

Slow Swedish with Katrin Berndt

Easy Swedish (from Easy Languages)

Normalt har denna kanal Easy Languages många videos, men för svenska har bara två videos:

3. Watch Netflix series

I watched all seasons of the bilingual series called ‘Bron’ (in Swedish) or ‘Broen’ (in Danish), which translates to ‘The Bridge’ (English). I enjoyed the autistic Swedish inspector and her Danish ‘companion’ investigating several (serial) killings that were commited on Swedish/Danish soil. It was very hard for me to understand the Danish, but the Swedish pronounciation is definitely more like the written language.

I also watched Caliphate till the end as it was very exciting and the first season of Young Royals, which is not the best, but good to address an LGBTQ topic in a liberal country except for some.

Helpful tip to watch Netflix and Youtube with double subtitles

Get yourself the plugin Language Reactor. It’s a powerful toolbox for learning languages. It helps you to discover, understand, and learn from native materials. Studying will become more effective, interesting, and enjoyable! for Chrome or Edge your browser. I use it multiple times per week!

Browse the Language Reactor Catalogue for Swedish Netflix series and movies or for Youtube

4. Watch the news in Swedish

The national Swedish TV channel is called SVT. On SVT News you can find several news bulletins and background programs, s.a.

Rapport – news bulletin from Sweden’s larget news broadcasting agency

Aktuellt an in-depth program with backgrounds

SVT Direkt with the latest broadcasts from news events and press conferences

Morgonstudion – with the day’s most important news and entertainment

5. Study grammar books to learn Swedish

Being Dutch, I thought it would be useful to buy a booklet explaining the Swedish grammar for Dutch learners, Basisgrammatica Zweeds. If you’re a native speaker of a Scandinavian or other Germanic language learning Swedish, I’d try to find a Grammar and method from your native language, as it will focus on the differences with Swedish. With a language being so close to my own, it would be silly to learn Swedish pronunciation in a way that Swedish 101 or Swedish for Dummies would show English speakers. Those methods, however, could work well if your native language is English indeed, or, if it’s from a different language background and you can’t find any specifically in your native language.

Complete Swedish (teachyourself.com) or wherever that title turns out to be cheaper for you:

Amazon.com: Teach Yourself Complete Swedish: From Beginner to Intermediate (TY: Language Guides): 9780071758789: Croghan, Vera, Holmqvist, Ivo: Books

Colloquial Swedish (from the Colloquial Language Series)

Colloquial Language is a well-known series for many languages. I consider it quite complete, although it’s from the perspective of English natives, which is fine if you’re one of them. Otherwise I’d recommend a self-study course book from your own language instead, especially when it’s close to your target language. So for all Germanic speakers learning Swedish: find your language specific Leer Zweeds – Lernen Sie Schwedish or Läre dig svenska. Otherwise this one will do.

Colloquial Swedish (routledgetextbooks.com)

I don’t get commission from anyone or any company. I’d love to, though, although it would be nicer if at one point you, if you’re a learner would buy me a cup of coffee if my blogs or pages helped you in reaching your language goals. Good luck in reaching your goals!

6. Use language learning apps

We all know the advantages of language learning apps such as Duolingo, Babbel, Mondly, Pimsleur, Lingodeer, Busuu, Rosetta Stone or Vocab builders such as Memrise, Linkvist, Anki, LingQ and options like FluentU. They have a low entry barrier: you can just download one and start right away. The downsides are generally that they don’t necessarily match your personal learning goals and interest. Feel free to read my review comparing Duolingo, Babbel and Mondly.

7. Have free chats in Swedish on Tandem

Know this platform to do language tandems? A language tandem is a way to learn your target language for free. For free? Well, you don’t need to pay any money, but you pay your tandem partner by giving your time by speaking your own language(s) in return for your partner to practice. So you’ll be able to practice 30 minutes Swedish or Swahili if you want to learn those for 30 minutes English, Spanish or whatever you speak at a native/high level in return. Go to Tandem.net and fill up your inbox with chats from people around the world speaking your target language(s)!

8. Conclusion

Whether you’re studying several books or read short stories, grammar books, watching fun video’s from Youtubers or Netflix films or series, having conversations on Tandem.net or in person, listen to radio stations or songs… Don’t forget the first and most important advice when learning a language and choosing the ‘best method’: Stick to whichever method you maintained in the past. Do what you like and what you managed to continue to do over the long-term. Think of it when you want to reach your objectives in sports: Did it work for you to have a fixed schedule or do you prefer to go (to do gym exercises or whatever you like to do) whenever you want to do them? What do you enjoy doing most?