The Girl with the Obsession with Sweden

It’s a funny thing, learning a language from scratch. I went through a brief Italian phase when I was 16 and in love with an Italian, as is required of all dreamy 16 year olds, but only really got as far as being taught naughty things to say to him by a friend whose Grandmother (worryingly, given what he taught me) was Italian. French I picked up between the ages of 7-10 when my family lived just outside Paris so absorbed without realising and by the time I started consciously learning in school some years later, I had the basics already well in hand.

I have absolutely no reason in the world to learn Swedish, except that I once read the best workout you can give your brain is to learn a new language, I read that while reading (by which I mean becoming slightly unhealthily obsessed with) the Millennium books, and I vaguely like the idea of randomly being able to speak a language that not many people other than its own citizens speak (as opposed to the way most people have a smattering of French or Spanish). I’ve also got deeply geeky reasons relating to my fascination with the English language. I love exploring how such a mongrel language developed, and there was of course a huge Norse influence on early English by way of the Vikings. After all, if my local monastery had been pillaged and menfolk slaughtered by giant dreadlocked Scandinavians, I’d be sure to steal a bit of vocabulary right back off them.

Plus the fact that I have always had a bit of mild Swedophelia. One of my earliest memories is of watching ABBA on Top of the Pops when I must have been barely three, and when I was eight I was quite convinced that the Super Trouper album was about me, on account of there being a song that mentioned Glasgow (where I’m from) and one that mentioned Paris (where I lived at the time). This probably says more about me than I’d really like to consider deeply, but I did organise a Sweden Day on their national holiday (it involved meatballs and an enthusiastic if ear-crushing rendition of a folk song I’m going to guess didn’t much resemble anything a Swedish person would recognise), and start up an ABBA fanclub. My country-crush also led me to invite the random class of Swedish kids at school (no I have no idea why the British School of Paris had a random class of Swedish kids either) to my birthday party, despite the fact that I’d never spoken to any of them before. Which might be because none of them could speak English. My parents didn’t thank me for that one (I still have memories of Dad trying to mime “it’s time for birthday cake!” while they all looked at him helplessly).

So anyway, my new year’s resolution this year was to learn Swedish, and I’ve been diligently repeating that jag heter Claire and it’s trevligt att traffas (nice to meet you) along with my CDs for the last few weeks (often out loud on the tube, which has the pleasing side effect of startling commuters). I thought I was doing well to be honest, particularly as I’ve been watching a lot of Swedish cinema (I recommend the original Insomnia* – even if it’s mostly in Norwegian – Ondskan (Evil) and Tillsammans (Together) if anyone’s interested, assuming that The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo and Let the Right One In go without saying!) and have started to be able to just about follow only glancing at the subtitles reasonably often). I’ve even been able to decipher most of my friend Maja’s facebook status updates, which I’m sure is at least as exciting for her as for me.

So I thought I was doing quite well. I managed to understand on the plane when the cabin crew man (who looked disconcertingly like Basshunter as it happens) offered me something to eat or drink, and respond nej, tack, because, I didn’t want anything to eat or drink. Get me, I thought to myself, pratar-ing Svenska. Nae bother. Well that lasted approximately until the plane landed.

* As far as I can make out, it doesn’t have another title, though when you mention it to Swedish people in a bar they don’t seem to know what you’re taking about… which might sadly lead you to drunkenly mime shooting a dog. At least they then knew what film I meant, but still. I’d drunkenly mimed shooting a dog. Anyway…