Did the Swedes Do Something To Piss Off America?

Codiekitty · 03-16-2006, 04:37 PM

One day I got an interest in learning Swedish. To my dismay I found University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, and TVI (the only colleges I have any kind of access to) don't offer courses in it, so I had to get some books and teach myself. Not only is there barely any material for it, but what I could find is actually pretty poor.

First I got a dictionary. It soon donned on my that it was written for Swedish speakers learning English, because the book's intro is in Swedish, and I don't understand what the words used to distinguish the different words mean. For example, I look up "kite". A kite can either be the wind toy, or a type of raptor (my personal favorite; any book claiming to be a Raptor Encyclopedia and excludes kites can go to Biology Reference hell). Here's what it reads:

1 (zool.) glada
2 drake (av t.ex.papper);

WTF? Does "zool." mean "zoological", meaning that's the word for the bird? Does this dictionary even include a word for the bird (my Japanese dictionary doesn't, but it's missing a lot of things; it doesn't even have words for "cobra" or "cheetah")? And since the explanation for what the stuff in this book means is all in Swedish, I'm kind of lost.

Piecing together that "papper" looked like "paper", and "drake" is accompanied by the expression "go fly a kite", I guess that one is the toy. But what's the first one? Considering how much it looks like "glider", I wonder if that's the book saying "I think you mean hang glider". But WTF is "zool."?!

By the way, "glada" isn't in the Swedish section of the damn book, and "drake" gives me "dragon; (leksak) kite".

Then there's the Teach Yourself Book/CD Pack. It more or less rushes pronounciation. After maybe ten minutes of people saying random words (the O with the two dots over it pisses me off) they already want you saying Swedish tongue twisters. It wouldn't be so bad if they had people saying all of them on the disc rather than three or four of them out of an entire page full, one for each letter of the Swedish alphabet. And then they "read off" some names of people who are being role played in the books, but neglect to tell you where the hell they're reading those names off from. I also love how they include the agonizingly long copyright announcement and "Hyping the student up for Swedish" bull on the same damn track as the brief summary of how to pronounce the vowels.

The Berlitz Phrase Book/CD Pack seemed good at first. The woman at the beginning of the disc tells you "The phrases on this disc follow those in the book, so you shouldn't get lost." Guess what; I got lost. They neglected to tell you that after the first section, they were only going to say one select phrase in each section, and that the selected phrase would be randomly selected from about a page full of them. There's also no "Let's start by figuring out how the hell to pronounce that O with the two dots over it."; you're expected to just jump right into speaking it.

Now that I only have to wear my retainer when I go to bed, I should have more time to work on pronounciation (I couldn't even speak English with that thing in my mouth), but damn, this sucks.

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

**Crazyswordsman** · 03-16-2006, 07:00 PM

Sweden is a Socialist country, so naturally there'd be some tension between us and the Swedes, especially considering who's in power right now here. I honestly think such tension is silly, as Sweden is a democracy, heh. -CSM

Codiekitty · 03-16-2006, 07:24 PM

Oh, by "Socialist" you mean how colleges and hospitals and all that jazz are free though the taxes are insane, right?

If so, that's it? What the hell?

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

***Ace Mercury*** · 03-16-2006, 08:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CodieKitty

Oh, by "Socialist" you mean how colleges and hospitals and all that jazz are free though the taxes are insane, right?

I guess we're lucky in Canada that most of us speak English, then.

zepatient · 03-17-2006, 02:49 AM

I thought that dragon in Swedish is drakka, I learned soemthing new.

Codiekitty · 03-17-2006, 10:13 AM

I could very well be wrong about this because I'm still on pronounciation, so don't go around repeating this to everyone you know as if it's fact, but I don't think Swedes have "kk". I think they use "ck" for that sound (the book says something like this, and uses "flicka"/"girl" for an example).

I tried out the VocabuLearn Swedish disc set I got; What it is is a collection of words that an English speaker says in English then a Swedish speaker says in Swedish (or, on the second half of each disc, a Swedish speaker says in Swedish, then an English speaker says in English). There's no rhyme or reason to the order they're saying these words in (they go from "the grass" to "the moon"), but that might to help with yourself learning pronounciation (which is what my goal is right now; it took me a month to learn Japanese Hiragana, so I don't think I'll get too discouraged if it takes me that long to learn Swedish pronounciation. I think my O with the two dots is getting better)... or possibly because they didn't know how to alphabetize them because some words start with totally different letters ("hunden" = "the dog"). I do find it irritating how the English chick speaks in your left ear, then the Swedish dude speaks in your right.

I've noticed one quirk about me is that I respond a lot better to men speaking foreign languages than women. I also respond best when the language is attempting to teach me with animals than when it's using words like "library" or "house".

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

Codiekitty · 03-20-2006, 12:54 PM

I read something that implies that another reason Swedish material is so hard to find is because it's considered a worthless second language.

According to this person, most Swedes know English and speak it well, and all the signs around Sweden (or maybe just Stockholm) are in both Swedish and English.

I've still got my reasons for learning it.

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

Romplayer · 03-21-2006, 11:39 AM

You got your reasons, huh? Girls?

Well, for me it would be much easier to learn Swedish, because it has something in common with German.
For example the dog: hunden in Swedish, Hund in German.
And the ö (with dots ^^) would be no problem for me

By the way... Does anybody here know at least a bit German?

Codiekitty · 03-21-2006, 11:56 AM

Why the hell would I want to attract girls with a foreign language? I'm not gay. O_o

I know a German swear word, that's it. >_> Though when Hasting's was having its "30% off all Dummies" books, I did pick up German for Dummies.

English and Swedish are both Germanic (probably meaning they both descended from German). There's a lot of words you can look at in Swedish and notice a similarity. "Katt" is Swedish for "cat". "Prov" is Swedish for "test", and though it doesn't look like "test", it does look like "prove".

Which reminds me, "test" is another example of that dictionary's "what's what" problem: "test" can either be a verb as in "to test something", or a noun as in "a test on something". It doesn't distinguish which one is which. And "to test" could be used as "to put to the test" and "to perform a test". I'm not 100% sure if they're actually considered different uses of the verb, but if they are, all the more BS factor of the dictionary.

The only other Swedish dictionary I can find in stores is the exact same damn dictionary, only with a different cover. The one I have is blue with a yellow bar down the front. The other one has a picture of a Swedish seaport on it. The actual content is 100% identical and everything is still in Swedish.

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

Koga · 03-21-2006, 12:29 PM

Yay, another language topic.

Germanic doesn't mean it descended from German. It's the term to describe the people (and their language) that lived in Northern Europe (among which the Angles and Saxons). German is one of the languages that descended from it as are English, Dutch, Frisian, and I think all Scandinavian languages (except Finnish, and I'm not sure about Icelandic). As far as I know English is the only language that uses German and Germany to refer to that country. Germany itself uses Deutsch and Deutschland, and Dutch uses Duits and Duitsland (Dutch is Niederlaendisch en Nederlands respectively). Germanisch and Germaans is used to refer to the old people and their language (people as in population, not persons).

On a side note, all European languages save two (Finnish and Hungarian, which are related oddly enough), as well as a lot of languages spoken in the area around India have descended from the same proto-language: Indo-European.

I suppose it's true that Swedish is not a very useful second language as Swedish are indeed quite good at English (as are most Scandinavians, I think). I think that in Northern Europe most people understand English and can manage when speaking English, unlike the Southern European countries with the Roman languages (e.g. French, Spanish, Italian Portuguese).

I used to be quite proficient in German, it was one of the subjects I graduated in at high school. I still can read and understand it very well, but my production has really decreased since high school. I still know most grammatical rules, and my pronunciation is quite good (I'm good at mimicking accents), but my knowledge of vocabulary is nowhere near what it used to be.

Is the dotted o pronounced like the German dotted o (it's also a sound in Dutch, btw)? In that case I can see why it is difficult for a native speaker of English. It's a front rounded vowel, which is counter-intuitive. Back vowels are naturally rounded, whereas front vowels are naturally unrounded. Try pronouncing /i/ as in sheep with rounded lips (the sound /y/ which occurs in Dutch and German as well as French) or an /u/ as in school without rounding your lips. I find the latter very hard as well, but it is a sound in Russian among other languages.

Codiekitty · 03-21-2006, 01:01 PM

I was actually getting the hang of the Ö by somehow toying with the /e/ in "insert", but I've already forgotten what I was doing with it. I had to put my Swedish and Japanese work on hold when something came up in the family over Spring Break (had to run around town for stuff, had to leave the headphones off so I could listen for the phone, etc.)

Japanese call Japan "Nihon".

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

Koga · 03-21-2006, 04:18 PM

Ah yes, then it's the sound I thought it was. The phonemic symbol is a slashed 'o' (which I don't know how to type). It's indeed similar to the 'e' in insert, but it's more in the front of the mouth (that is the tip of the tongue is more in the front of the mouth, closer to the place where 'ay' as in day is pronounced) and with more lip rounding.

Btw, /e/ is not the 'e' in insert, but the 'ay' in day. Strictly speaking only in Scottish English, because in other variations it's usually a dipthong (difficult word for two vowels in succesion, which are pronounced as one sound. Some examples are 'ou' /au/ and 'I' /ai/). /e/ is usually pronounced /ei/ in English. The phonemic symbols for the vowels are very different from spelling in English, because they are based on the Spanish vowels, and they conform with most European vowels.

So /i/ is the sound 'sheep'
/u/ is the sound in 'goose'
/o/ is the sound in 'boat' (usually realised as [ou])
/e/ is the sound in 'day' (usually realised as [ei])
/a/ doesn't really occur in American English. It's like the a in in Australian park /pak/

The symbol for the 'e' in insert is a reversed epsilon, which kind of looks like a 3.

Koga · 03-21-2006, 04:58 PM

I just checked wikipedia and the dotted o is not presented with a crossed o like I thought, but with a o and e smashed together. It's not the sound formed by pronouncing /e/ with lip rounding but the 'e' of pet.

You can actually hear the sounds at wikipedia, but of course you would have to know what symbol represents what spelling in Swedish. For most sounds they give examples though.

Codiekitty · 03-21-2006, 06:06 PM

What is "lip rounding"? The Swedish book keeps mentioning "lip rounding", but I don't know what it is, and it would probably help if I knew. Is it the way your lips go when you say "Ooooooo"? Or is it more like the way your lips go when you do a cheesy toothy smile? Or do you make a large circle with your lips, or what?

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

Koga · 03-22-2006, 07:27 AM

It's indeed like in 'oooooo'. Like is said in a previous post

Quote:

Back vowels are naturally rounded, whereas front vowels are naturally unrounded. Try pronouncing /i/ as in sheep with rounded lips (the sound /y/ which occurs in Dutch and German as well as French) or an /u/ as in school without rounding your lips. I find the latter very hard as well, but it is a sound in Russian among other languages.

Of course you would have to know what vowels are back and front. A somewhat strange way to find out is put your finger on the tip of your tongue and pronounce a bunch of vowels, you will feel your finger go deeper in your mouth for 'oo' 'awe', and 'oa', but stay at the front for 'ee' 'e' and 'ay' (I used spelling now to not further confuse you). You will also notice that your lips are rounded for 'oo' 'awe' and 'ao' and spread for 'ee' 'e' and 'ay'. These are common sounds across many languages, unlike the rounded front counterparts and unrounded back ones. Dutch has many rounded front vowels, but no spread back vowels. English has no rounded front vowels, and I think only one spread back vowel. The 'u' in 'cup'.

Btw, here's the wikipedia page on that vowel. Maybe it's helpful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mi..._rounded_vowel

Rolls-Royce Man · 03-22-2006, 03:24 PM

It's simple...

America doesn't like countries that can't win wars...

Like Canada, or....Yu...go....Slavia? (You go Slavia!)

or Romania, the dirtiest country in the world, Where You can be a suicidal Bomber just by carrying a match

The only reason the Sweds exist is because of it's cheese and Bank!

Oh, and Hitler didn't want to conquer a people that yodel...

YODALEHEODALEEHEEYODELEEHEEHOYODELEEHOYODELEEHOADU UHEE!

(I'm not being serious, I really don't know why no one want to speak Swedish... Although I do know if you say the word French within 100 miles of the White House, you are immeadiatly Tasered till crispy Brown..

Romplayer · 03-22-2006, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koga

Try pronouncing /i/ as in sheep with rounded lips (the sound /y/ which occurs in Dutch and German as well as French) or an /u/ as in school without rounding your lips. I find the latter very hard as well, but it is a sound in Russian among other languages.

Euh... are you sure you are talking of the ö?

I think CodieKitty got the better explaining:

Quote:

Originally Posted by CodieKitty

I was actually getting the hang of the Ö by somehow toying with the /e/ in "insert"

By the way... The word "euh" is also pronounced like the ö, isn't it?

Koga is right with the Germanic thing. These languages don't come from the Germans, but they have the same forefathers (concerning the language), which are called Germannen in German. The have lived 2000 years ago in the are of Germany, but not only.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koga

I just checked wikipedia and the dotted o is not presented with a crossed o like I thought, but with a o and e smashed together. It's not the sound formed by pronouncing /e/ with lip rounding but the 'e' of pet.

rounding lips with the e of pet? I'm not quite sure about that...
By the way, the e in pet kinda sounds like the German ä.
And yes, ö has developed out of oe, ä was ae and ü ue.

I think what Koga means with rounding lips is what you do with Oooooo.
Ö has exactly the same lips as Ooooo, but your tongue is a bit nearer at the bottom lip (I bet this expression has to sound terrible for you... don't know the right word and am too lazy to look it up

).

@Tazy 10: Yodeling, cheese and bank? Hey dude, we are talking about Sweden, not Swiss! And the Swiss people don't yodel - that's Austria. And before you ask - no, not Australia! -.-

Codiekitty · 03-22-2006, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tazy 10

It's simple...

America doesn't like countries that can't win wars...

Like Canada, or....Yu...go....Slavia? (You go Slavia!)

or Romania, the dirtiest country in the world, Where You can be a suicidal Bomber just by carrying a match

The only reason the Sweds exist is because of it's cheese and Bank!

Oh, and Hitler didn't want to conquer a people that yodel...

YODALEHEODALEEHEEYODELEEHEEHOYODELEEHOYODELEEHOADU UHEE!

(I'm not being serious, I really don't know why no one want to speak Swedish... Although I do know if you say the word French within 100 miles of the White House, you are immeadiatly Tasered till crispy Brown..

Uh, I think you have Sweden confused with Switzerland. Switzerland gave us the cheese with the holes in it. Sweden gave us those flavorless yet insanely addicting red fish candies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Romplayer

@Tazy 10: Yodeling, cheese and bank? Hey dude, we are talking about Sweden, not Swiss! And the Swiss people don't yodel - that's Austria. And before you ask - no, not Australia! -.-

HAHAHA! ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER YODELS!

(Look, I just went though about half a pound of Skittles.)

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

Koga · 03-22-2006, 06:48 PM

Yes I'm sure, Romplayer. Check the wikipedia link I posted. Dotted o in Swedish is the rounded counterpart of e in pet (and it's longer of course). It's not the sound in 'euh' (I assume you mean the sound you utter when thinking, also spelled eh, or erm), which is schwa.

The e in insert is closer, but it's more to the back, and it's not as rounded.

Wikipedia is very helpful in this case, just do a search for IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and you will come across a table with all the consonants and a vowel chart. Here are links to the vowels I just mentioned:

dotted o in Swedish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mi..._rounded_vowel

'e' in bed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mi...nrounded_vowel

'e' in insert: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mi...nrounded_vowel

schwa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa

Codiekitty · 03-22-2006, 07:43 PM

This is why I would like to take a class in Swedish. That way I could see how people's mouths move when they make these sounds.

Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

03-16-2006, 04:37 PM	#1
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	Did the Swedes Do Something To Piss Off America? One day I got an interest in learning Swedish. To my dismay I found University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, and TVI (the only colleges I have any kind of access to) don't offer courses in it, so I had to get some books and teach myself. Not only is there barely any material for it, but what I could find is actually pretty poor. First I got a dictionary. It soon donned on my that it was written for Swedish speakers learning English, because the book's intro is in Swedish, and I don't understand what the words used to distinguish the different words mean. For example, I look up "kite". A kite can either be the wind toy, or a type of raptor (my personal favorite; any book claiming to be a Raptor Encyclopedia and excludes kites can go to Biology Reference hell). Here's what it reads: 1 (zool.) glada 2 drake (av t.ex.papper); WTF? Does "zool." mean "zoological", meaning that's the word for the bird? Does this dictionary even include a word for the bird (my Japanese dictionary doesn't, but it's missing a lot of things; it doesn't even have words for "cobra" or "cheetah")? And since the explanation for what the stuff in this book means is all in Swedish, I'm kind of lost. Piecing together that "papper" looked like "paper", and "drake" is accompanied by the expression "go fly a kite", I guess that one is the toy. But what's the first one? Considering how much it looks like "glider", I wonder if that's the book saying "I think you mean hang glider". But WTF is "zool."?! By the way, "glada" isn't in the Swedish section of the damn book, and "drake" gives me "dragon; (leksak) kite". Then there's the Teach Yourself Book/CD Pack. It more or less rushes pronounciation. After maybe ten minutes of people saying random words (the O with the two dots over it pisses me off) they already want you saying Swedish tongue twisters. It wouldn't be so bad if they had people saying all of them on the disc rather than three or four of them out of an entire page full, one for each letter of the Swedish alphabet. And then they "read off" some names of people who are being role played in the books, but neglect to tell you where the hell they're reading those names off from. I also love how they include the agonizingly long copyright announcement and "Hyping the student up for Swedish" bull on the same damn track as the brief summary of how to pronounce the vowels. The Berlitz Phrase Book/CD Pack seemed good at first. The woman at the beginning of the disc tells you "The phrases on this disc follow those in the book, so you shouldn't get lost." Guess what; I got lost. They neglected to tell you that after the first section, they were only going to say one select phrase in each section, and that the selected phrase would be randomly selected from about a page full of them. There's also no "Let's start by figuring out how the hell to pronounce that O with the two dots over it."; you're expected to just jump right into speaking it. Now that I only have to wear my retainer when I go to bed, I should have more time to work on pronounciation (I couldn't even speak English with that thing in my mouth), but damn, this sucks. Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there! Last edited by CodieKitty; 03-16-2006 at 04:59 PM.

03-21-2006, 04:58 PM	#13
Koga Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: The Netherlands Gender: Posts: 17,095 Thanks: 104 Thanked 185 Times in 117 Posts Points: 107,877.07 Bank: 21,640.09 Total Points: 129,517.16 Donate	I just checked wikipedia and the dotted o is not presented with a crossed o like I thought, but with a o and e smashed together. It's not the sound formed by pronouncing /e/ with lip rounding but the 'e' of pet. You can actually hear the sounds at wikipedia, but of course you would have to know what symbol represents what spelling in Swedish. For most sounds they give examples though. Last edited by Koga; 03-21-2006 at 05:11 PM.

03-21-2006, 06:06 PM	#14
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	What is "lip rounding"? The Swedish book keeps mentioning "lip rounding", but I don't know what it is, and it would probably help if I knew. Is it the way your lips go when you say "Ooooooo"? Or is it more like the way your lips go when you do a cheesy toothy smile? Or do you make a large circle with your lips, or what? Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there! Last edited by CodieKitty; 03-21-2006 at 07:44 PM.

03-16-2006, 07:00 PM	#2
Crazyswordsman RPG Mod Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Booyaville (yeah!) Gender: Posts: 8,363 Thanks: 586 Thanked 436 Times in 287 Posts Points: 153,049.71 Bank: 55,544.38 Total Points: 208,594.09 Donate	Sweden is a Socialist country, so naturally there'd be some tension between us and the Swedes, especially considering who's in power right now here. I honestly think such tension is silly, as Sweden is a democracy, heh. -CSM

03-16-2006, 07:24 PM	#3
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	Oh, by "Socialist" you mean how colleges and hospitals and all that jazz are free though the taxes are insane, right? If so, that's it? What the hell? Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

03-17-2006, 02:49 AM	#5
zepatient Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: 3 days from next Wednesday Gender: Posts: 358 Thanks: 6 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post Points: 4,204.95 Bank: 2,006.47 Total Points: 6,211.42 Donate	I thought that dragon in Swedish is drakka, I learned soemthing new.

03-17-2006, 10:13 AM	#6
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	I could very well be wrong about this because I'm still on pronounciation, so don't go around repeating this to everyone you know as if it's fact, but I don't think Swedes have "kk". I think they use "ck" for that sound (the book says something like this, and uses "flicka"/"girl" for an example). I tried out the VocabuLearn Swedish disc set I got; What it is is a collection of words that an English speaker says in English then a Swedish speaker says in Swedish (or, on the second half of each disc, a Swedish speaker says in Swedish, then an English speaker says in English). There's no rhyme or reason to the order they're saying these words in (they go from "the grass" to "the moon"), but that might to help with yourself learning pronounciation (which is what my goal is right now; it took me a month to learn Japanese Hiragana, so I don't think I'll get too discouraged if it takes me that long to learn Swedish pronounciation. I think my O with the two dots is getting better)... or possibly because they didn't know how to alphabetize them because some words start with totally different letters ("hunden" = "the dog"). I do find it irritating how the English chick speaks in your left ear, then the Swedish dude speaks in your right. I've noticed one quirk about me is that I respond a lot better to men speaking foreign languages than women. I also respond best when the language is attempting to teach me with animals than when it's using words like "library" or "house". Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

03-20-2006, 12:54 PM	#7
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	I read something that implies that another reason Swedish material is so hard to find is because it's considered a worthless second language. According to this person, most Swedes know English and speak it well, and all the signs around Sweden (or maybe just Stockholm) are in both Swedish and English. I've still got my reasons for learning it. Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

03-21-2006, 11:39 AM	#8
Romplayer Member Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Germany Gender: Posts: 655 Thanks: 1 Thanked 4 Times in 3 Posts Points: 3,811.70 Bank: 585.83 Total Points: 4,397.53 Donate	You got your reasons, huh? Girls? Well, for me it would be much easier to learn Swedish, because it has something in common with German. For example the dog: hunden in Swedish, Hund in German. And the ö (with dots ^^) would be no problem for me By the way... Does anybody here know at least a bit German?

03-21-2006, 11:56 AM	#9
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	Why the hell would I want to attract girls with a foreign language? I'm not gay. O_o I know a German swear word, that's it. >_> Though when Hasting's was having its "30% off all Dummies" books, I did pick up German for Dummies. English and Swedish are both Germanic (probably meaning they both descended from German). There's a lot of words you can look at in Swedish and notice a similarity. "Katt" is Swedish for "cat". "Prov" is Swedish for "test", and though it doesn't look like "test", it does look like "prove". Which reminds me, "test" is another example of that dictionary's "what's what" problem: "test" can either be a verb as in "to test something", or a noun as in "a test on something". It doesn't distinguish which one is which. And "to test" could be used as "to put to the test" and "to perform a test". I'm not 100% sure if they're actually considered different uses of the verb, but if they are, all the more BS factor of the dictionary. The only other Swedish dictionary I can find in stores is the exact same damn dictionary, only with a different cover. The one I have is blue with a yellow bar down the front. The other one has a picture of a Swedish seaport on it. The actual content is 100% identical and everything is still in Swedish. Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

03-21-2006, 12:29 PM	#10
Koga Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: The Netherlands Gender: Posts: 17,095 Thanks: 104 Thanked 185 Times in 117 Posts Points: 107,877.07 Bank: 21,640.09 Total Points: 129,517.16 Donate	Yay, another language topic. Germanic doesn't mean it descended from German. It's the term to describe the people (and their language) that lived in Northern Europe (among which the Angles and Saxons). German is one of the languages that descended from it as are English, Dutch, Frisian, and I think all Scandinavian languages (except Finnish, and I'm not sure about Icelandic). As far as I know English is the only language that uses German and Germany to refer to that country. Germany itself uses Deutsch and Deutschland, and Dutch uses Duits and Duitsland (Dutch is Niederlaendisch en Nederlands respectively). Germanisch and Germaans is used to refer to the old people and their language (people as in population, not persons). On a side note, all European languages save two (Finnish and Hungarian, which are related oddly enough), as well as a lot of languages spoken in the area around India have descended from the same proto-language: Indo-European. I suppose it's true that Swedish is not a very useful second language as Swedish are indeed quite good at English (as are most Scandinavians, I think). I think that in Northern Europe most people understand English and can manage when speaking English, unlike the Southern European countries with the Roman languages (e.g. French, Spanish, Italian Portuguese). I used to be quite proficient in German, it was one of the subjects I graduated in at high school. I still can read and understand it very well, but my production has really decreased since high school. I still know most grammatical rules, and my pronunciation is quite good (I'm good at mimicking accents), but my knowledge of vocabulary is nowhere near what it used to be. Is the dotted o pronounced like the German dotted o (it's also a sound in Dutch, btw)? In that case I can see why it is difficult for a native speaker of English. It's a front rounded vowel, which is counter-intuitive. Back vowels are naturally rounded, whereas front vowels are naturally unrounded. Try pronouncing /i/ as in sheep with rounded lips (the sound /y/ which occurs in Dutch and German as well as French) or an /u/ as in school without rounding your lips. I find the latter very hard as well, but it is a sound in Russian among other languages.

03-21-2006, 01:01 PM	#11
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	I was actually getting the hang of the Ö by somehow toying with the /e/ in "insert", but I've already forgotten what I was doing with it. I had to put my Swedish and Japanese work on hold when something came up in the family over Spring Break (had to run around town for stuff, had to leave the headphones off so I could listen for the phone, etc.) Japanese call Japan "Nihon". Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

03-21-2006, 04:18 PM	#12
Koga Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: The Netherlands Gender: Posts: 17,095 Thanks: 104 Thanked 185 Times in 117 Posts Points: 107,877.07 Bank: 21,640.09 Total Points: 129,517.16 Donate	Ah yes, then it's the sound I thought it was. The phonemic symbol is a slashed 'o' (which I don't know how to type). It's indeed similar to the 'e' in insert, but it's more in the front of the mouth (that is the tip of the tongue is more in the front of the mouth, closer to the place where 'ay' as in day is pronounced) and with more lip rounding. Btw, /e/ is not the 'e' in insert, but the 'ay' in day. Strictly speaking only in Scottish English, because in other variations it's usually a dipthong (difficult word for two vowels in succesion, which are pronounced as one sound. Some examples are 'ou' /au/ and 'I' /ai/). /e/ is usually pronounced /ei/ in English. The phonemic symbols for the vowels are very different from spelling in English, because they are based on the Spanish vowels, and they conform with most European vowels. So /i/ is the sound 'sheep' /u/ is the sound in 'goose' /o/ is the sound in 'boat' (usually realised as [ou]) /e/ is the sound in 'day' (usually realised as [ei]) /a/ doesn't really occur in American English. It's like the a in in Australian park /pak/ The symbol for the 'e' in insert is a reversed epsilon, which kind of looks like a 3.

03-22-2006, 03:24 PM	#16
Rolls-Royce Man Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: BE PREPARED FOR YOUR MISSION. Gender: Posts: 8,711 Thanks: 229 Thanked 482 Times in 365 Posts Blog Entries: 7 Points: 15,056.70 Bank: 53,315.07 Total Points: 68,371.77 Donate	It's simple... America doesn't like countries that can't win wars... Like Canada, or....Yu...go....Slavia? (You go Slavia!) or Romania, the dirtiest country in the world, Where You can be a suicidal Bomber just by carrying a match The only reason the Sweds exist is because of it's cheese and Bank! Oh, and Hitler didn't want to conquer a people that yodel... YODALEHEODALEEHEEYODELEEHEEHOYODELEEHOYODELEEHOADU UHEE! (I'm not being serious, I really don't know why no one want to speak Swedish... Although I do know if you say the word French within 100 miles of the White House, you are immeadiatly Tasered till crispy Brown..

03-22-2006, 06:48 PM	#19
Koga Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: The Netherlands Gender: Posts: 17,095 Thanks: 104 Thanked 185 Times in 117 Posts Points: 107,877.07 Bank: 21,640.09 Total Points: 129,517.16 Donate	Yes I'm sure, Romplayer. Check the wikipedia link I posted. Dotted o in Swedish is the rounded counterpart of e in pet (and it's longer of course). It's not the sound in 'euh' (I assume you mean the sound you utter when thinking, also spelled eh, or erm), which is schwa. The e in insert is closer, but it's more to the back, and it's not as rounded. Wikipedia is very helpful in this case, just do a search for IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and you will come across a table with all the consonants and a vowel chart. Here are links to the vowels I just mentioned: dotted o in Swedish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mi..._rounded_vowel 'e' in bed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mi...nrounded_vowel 'e' in insert: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mi...nrounded_vowel schwa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa

03-22-2006, 07:43 PM	#20
Codiekitty Just Another Face in Red Jumpsuit Join Date: May 2001 Location: Lemmingland Gender: Posts: 19,143 Thanks: 121 Thanked 174 Times in 120 Posts Points: 49,158.72 Bank: 3,021,450.74 Total Points: 3,070,609.46 Donate	This is why I would like to take a class in Swedish. That way I could see how people's mouths move when they make these sounds. Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!