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Learn Swedish With Online Swedish Radio

thomas — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:23:51 +0000

One of my Swedish textbooks has a section at the beginning with useful websites for Swedish learners. A couple of these are Swedish newspapers and radio online. If you are studying Swedish, or know someone who is, you might want to check these out:

8sidor – http://8sidor.lattlast.se/ – 8sidor has daily news in Swedish. But not just any Swedish news, EASY Swedish news. To translate what my textbook says about it: “8sidor broadcasts news in easy Swedish, both in audio and print format. This is frickin’ badass (最適) for developing listening comprehension skills.” The transcriptions are exact and there are about 6-10 stories read aloud daily. They keep their archives up too, so you can go back and listen to the news from the past.
I’ve been starting my mornings listening to 8sidor three times before breakfast and I listen to it a few more times at the end of the day. I am not at a level to where I can understand completely yet, but i can get used to the sound of the language and try to pick out as many words as I can (English cognates especially). I think next week I’m going to start printing out the transcriptions daily to study and add into Anki (with the audio!!). Look for the big microphone with the word “LYSSNA” on the right sidebar.
Sveriges Radio – http://www.sr.se/ – online Swedish radio. They have over 40 channels all in Swedish with everything from news to comedy to children’s programming. Most of it is targeted at Swedes but they have a program called Klartext that has news (audio and text) in easy Swedish, much like 8sidor. You can catch it on channel P4 at 6pm Swedish time, or access already aired shows here.
I haven’t made this site part of my daily routine yet, mostly because its so vast that I haven’t found my favorite programs yet. I sometimes set up my computer to play random channels as background noise though. And the children’s programs are fun to listen to as well.
Lexin – http://lexin.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/swe-eng – Not Swedish radio, but I guess it deserves a mention since any learner of Swedish will have use of an online dictionary. Lexin is a great online dictionary and it’s not only for English-Swedish/Swedish-English. They also have Swedish/Spanish, Swedish/Arabic and about 10 more languages. I usually have this open in a separate tab and I will paste words from 8sidor news into Lexin for a quick look-up.

That’s all! Do you know of any online media resources for Swedish? How about another language you are studying (Spanish? Polish? Mandarin? News in Sanskrit?)? If so, please drop a comment, especially if you know of a site similar to 8sidor but for Japanese. ;)

Starting Swedish

thomas — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:39:27 +0000

So I was at the bookstore the other day and I just couldn’t keep myself away from the foreign language section. In a weakened state of mind I nabbed these:

For those of you who don’t read Japanese, those are beginning Swedish textbooks.

It looks like I’ve made the commitment to start studying Swedish. Yens have been thrown on the table. No turning back now!

Swedish on the surface looks much easier than Japanese and Pali. I speak English already, you see, and Swedish has a lot in common with English. I’m approaching Swedish as a fun project rather than a serious endeavor. I’ve been learning some Swedish children’s songs for fun and thought it would be worthwhile to learn the meaning of what I was singing. My study of Swedish may turn more serious in the future, but right now I don’t want to lose focus on Japanese or Pali, especially Japanese (both of which are moving along full steam, btw).

Studying Swedish will help me with Japanese because the textbooks are in Japanese.

So far I haven’t run into anything that has given me trouble. Occasionally I have to look up a grammar term in my Japanese dictionary, but other than that I can read through it fairly quickly and with clear understanding. I think I’m going to ignore the katakana pronunciation guides though :)

I hope this will help me on my trip to Sweden next year!

Grevens Hund

thomas — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:24:38 +0000

My grandparents on my father’s side immigrated to America from Sweden in the 1920s. Many Americans are obsessed about their “roots”, being proud of having Irish or Italian or whatever heritage, even if they have no contact or relationship with the land of their ancestors. I don’t know why exactly, but it may be because America as a nation has a short history and there are many people who can trace their heritage to another country of origin in a few generations or less.

Growing up, I wasn’t obsessed with my Scandinavian heritage, but I was definitely aware of it. I didn’t care or know very much about Sweden, but if say a Swedish boxer was fighting a Portuguese boxer on TV I would cheer for the Swedish one just because. If I went to IHOP and had a choice of German, French or Swedish pancakes, I’d choose the Swedish ones, just because. It was just a fun thing to do.

Since my firstborn son was born last September, I’ve had some unexplainable shift in my thinking and now I have a stronger feeling of attachment to my Swedish roots. As a result of this, my baby son has begun to accumulate a lot of Sweden-related [and Japanese] things [my wife is Japanese]. My son now has Dala horse pajamas, D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths and more recently, we got him a cd of Swedish children songs.

Anyway, that’s a long introduction to this post about a Swedish children’s song. Sorry about that.

Most English speakers are probably familiar with the song “Bingo”. You know, the one that goes like this:

There was a farmer (who) had a dog,
and Bingo was his name-o.
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
and Bingo was his name-o.

Our cd of Swedish children’s songs has a Swedish version of this song called Grevens Hund. The verse has a different melody than “Bingo”, but the spelling chorus has the same tune. I thought I’d share it with you. I don’t speak or read Swedish, but I found that I could translate some of the song anyway. Below is a link to the .mp3 (hope I don’t get in trouble) followed by the lyrics. It’s a short song.

Listen to the song here

Grevens Hund

Greven hade en liten hund
Trulle var hans namn, serru
greven hade en liten hund
Trulle var hans namn serru
T-R-U-L-L-E
T-R-U-L-L-E
T-R-U-L-L-E
Trulle var hans namn serru

Greven hade en liten katt
Trisse var hans namn, serru
greven hade en liten katt
Trisse var hans namn serru
T-R-I-S-S-E
T-R-I-S-S-E
T-R-I-S-S-E
Trisse var hans namn, serru

Greven hade båd hund och katt
trilla om varann, serru
greven hade båd hund och katt
trilla om varann, serru
T-R-I-L-L-A
T-R-I-L-L-A
T-R-I-L-L-A
trilla om varann, serru

trans: Greven (proper name? [edit: Greven means The Count. Big thanks to helpful reader adjusting]) had a little dog
Trulle was his name.
Greven had a little dog
Trulle was his name.
T-R-U-L-L-E …

Greven had a little cat
Trisse was his name.
Greven had a little cat
Trisse was his name.
T-R-I-S-S-E …

[edit: a friendly reader helped with the translation of the third verse. Thanks adjusting!]
Greven had a dog and cat…
They tumble around together.
Greven had a dog and cat,
They tumble around together.
T-R-I-L-L-A …

My son loves these songs, and I’ve been having fun learning to sing them (with poor pronunciation I’m sure :) ). I wanted to share my love of language with my son somehow – what better way than introducing him to other languages through music?

Do you know of another version of this song? Write about it in the comments. Or if you want to talk about children songs in general or Swedish or whatever, please do!