One of the more intimidating factors about relocating to a different country for a semester is having to get by without knowing the language that everyone else is speaking. In this blog post I want to talk about the how I have adapted to life in Sweden without being able to speak or understand much Swedish myself.
The first thing that you need to understand about life in Sweden is that the population here has one of the highest average rates of the number of languages spoken in the world. Even among older generations, the ability to converse in English is almost ubiquitous throughout Sweden, and even more so in Lund because of the high number of international students that pass through. As much as Swedes like to hear you practice your Swedish at a store or cafe, I can tell you that they are even more excited for an opportunity to practice their English. Although it is great to be able to communicate with most of everyone here, it can certainly be difficult to practice the little Swedish that you do know.
The Swedish language is hard to learn because there a good number of sounds that I am not used to making, especially if I were to phonetically pronounce the words how they are spelled. There are 3 extra vowels which adds a bit more difficulty to the pronunciation and meaning of words. One funny thing about the short conversational phrases that are used in Swedish is that certain words like hej (hello) or tack (thank you) are said twice in a row. Another one of my favorite words is sockergris, which means someone with a sugar tooth in English, but the direct translation is sugar pig.
