Svenska Lessons: Let the Epic Failures Start

This will be my last weekend as a total bum. On Monday, I will start attending Svenskundervisning för invandrare (SFI), which basically is a class for adults who want to learn Swedish. Excited as I was to actually start doing something instead of just trying to think of how to spend the day, I never really gone into lengths to prepare myself for studying Swedish.


After signing up for classes about two months ago, the people who worked at SFI gave me links and websites to help me learn a bit of Swedish while waiting for actual lessons to start. The websites included one that actually had modules for learning words while the other sites led to radio and television programs in Swedish. Days of procrastination turned into weeks and then into a month. Before I knew it, only a couple of modules were visited while a handful of words and phrases have been learned. As it turns out, I liked learning better through experience and application rather than trying to memorize things and then groping at these words later when I need them.


How does one learn a language exactly? Does it involve memorization of words, grammar rules, and spelling? Or does one learn from immersing oneself in one's new environment, ears perked to listen and pick up words which would be used during a similar context or situation later in the week? Do you remember how you learned words when you were a child? 


Words and their meanings have probably been learned through both memory and application. As a child, when you see a thing with four wooden legs, a seat, and a backrest, you associate it with feeding, sitting, and generally just hanging out in the living room: chair. With the number of meals you had daily, you learn that this 'chair' could be found in the kitchen, the living room, or any other place where there could be place to sit. Words are learned through function, meaning, and context. How then, does one learn a language with pre-existing concepts and definitions of things?

***


Yesterday, at a store, a lady apologized to me for moving a rack of sunglasses while I was still browsing through them. While my really basic Swedish is fine, my grasp of three extra vowels (å, ä. and ö) are horrible at best. So goes the scene:


Lady: Oj, förlåt! (Oh, sorry!)
Me: Ingerfära.
(The lady looks at me strangely,as I try to smile knowing that I might have done *something* to merit that look.)


I asked Esmi the Bear later what the proper reply to a stranger's apology was. Apparently, it was something else. Instead of saying 'it was nothing', I told the lady, 'ginger'. Now, I have learned that 'ingenfära' is 'ginger' while 'ingenfara' means 'that's nothing'.
 
As I learn more Swedish words, I know I'd get more confused and probably more (unintentionally) offensive as I practice speaking the language. I just hope I'd fare better than the guy who confused the Swedish words for 'comversation' and 'intercourse'.