When Eef wrote his piece on foreign languages, more specific on the French language for non-native speakers, he presented the article to me by email. In this email Eef he asked me on my view on the situations sketched in his article. This is a very fair question indeed as my wife and I left our home country The Netherlands (aka Holland) in 1997 when we emigrated to Sweden. You could say Eef’s and my family share the experience of moving abroad to a country we did not speak the language of. The prevailing language in Sweden being Swedish as it is French in France. In Eef’s defence, they were pensioners, while we were in our thirties.

More specific, in his email Eef wonders about these issues:

• Hoe is je uitspraak van die taal? Vind/vond je het lastig om te leren?
  How is your pronunciation of that language? Did you find it difficult to learn?
• Staat Zweeds dichter bij Nederlands dan Frans?
  Is Swedish closer to Dutch than French?
• Zijn er ook Nederlandse klanken die in het Zweeds niet bestaan?
  Are there also Dutch sounds that do not exist in Swedish?
• Kent de taal ook de gender-ellende (mannelijk/vrouwelijk)?
  Does language also know the gender misery (male/female)?

As may be expected, we knew in advance we were going to move to Sweden. As such, it seemed like a good idea to take a Swedish course while we still lived in The Netherlands. With the benefit of hindsight, this did not contribute to much. Yes we could order a bread ad the bakers in Swedish, but any return questions would immediately reveal us as non-Swedish speaking tourists.

In favor of the Swedish as compared to the French, ‘everyone’ speaks at least one foreign language – and is not afraid to use it. In almost all places you turn up without the proper vocabulary, the Swedes will acknowledge you being a foreigner and switch to the foreign language they know, most often English. While this may seems marvelous for tourists, it is rather annoying that Swedes rather practice their own foreign language skills that helping you out getting practice in the Swedish language.

Needless to say that after arrival in Sweden we joined courses to improve our language skills. At my work, I made a point at only speaking English to one person while insisting on speaking and being spoken to in Swedish by the rest of the staff. Listening radio on my daily travel to and from work also helped me greatly in pronunciation and vocabulary.

In my few travels in France, I found the French to be particularly picky on pronunciation. If you miss a grammar rule or otherwise not sound like a French native, you run the risk of being ignored or misunderstood. Admittetly, during our last stay in Paris a few years ago, we found that more services indeed could be had in English. Then again, this was Paris.

The Swedes are not like that at all. As said before, they will switch to another language if they suspect you to be a tourist. If your suspected to be a Swedish speaker, albeit with some sort of foreign accent or dialect, they’ll still make the effort to communicate with you in Swedish. We will never have a discussion about the correct pronunciation of the word ‘Ébreuil’, or any Swedish tone for that matter. The Swedes will try and understand and are flexible in doing so – which is the secret to easy communication.

Here’s an example on a town that will get me in trouble every time: Kristianstad. Seems easy you might think, just pronounce as spelled and you should be ok. Unfortunatelly, it doesn’t work that way for this city. The phonetically correct pronunciation would be ‘/krɪˈɧansta/’, though I’d say ‘griggansta’ (dutch tongue) would be closer in my view. You sometimes hear the first K as a K but probably as often as a soft G. Then again, as Eef clearly states, this view is different for each listener and mother tongue.

Talking about the infamous soft G. The hard G does not exist in Swedish. It seems to be reserved for a select set of languages such as Ducth, Arabic, Hebrew and a few more. The others, including the French, will have to do with the soft G or, as Eef ponints out, the French guttural G.

The Swedish alphabet has been enhanced with a few extra letters, namely Å, Ä and Ö. These are easy to learn, use and pronounce, no difficulties there.

The W is considered old fashioned and largely ignored in the alphabet. It is mostly still used in first names and last names, but seldom in anything modern. Instead of the W, the V is used and pronounced as a W. In many languages, as in Dutch, there’s a clear distinction between the W and the V, they are indeed pronounced differently. Try and thing removing the W and use a V instead, pronouncing all V’s as a W. Now go buy a VW (aka a Volkswagen) at your local dealership, not to speak of a Volvo.

Then there’s the Swedish Y. In Swedish it is pronounced as the letter between the I and the Dutch U (phonetic:  /ʏ/), or rather the mix of these two letters. When in doubt, use the U as folks will assume you’re from Finland where it is pronounced that way. With between 400.000 and 700.000 people with Finnish roots in Sweden, you’ll hear that a lot. And once again, the Swedes do not mind too much, they’ll interpret and move on.

Learning the language was not really a problem. You enlist in one of the local Svenska för Invandrare (Swedish for Immigrants) courses as long as you need and learn the language verbally and written. And it being Sweden, it doesn’t cost you a dime, all education is free out here. I went weekly for half a year, graduated and was deemed fit for release in Swedish society.

Of course, I worked and persisted in speaking Swedish with my colleagues and listening to the radio – both of which helped greatly. As such I picked up what I feel is quite a good pronunciation of the language.

Reading a lot helps with spelling and expansion of your vocabulary, which I found quite enjoyable and good to add depth to conversations with colleagues and friends. After all, I did not want to be a Manuel: ‘I speak English very well, I learn it from a bookeh’.

With this in mind, I am aware that we kept sort of an accent when speaking Swedish with Swedes. The ones that have a feeling for languages may point me out as a native Dutch speaker. As I’m quite aware how other non-native Swedish speakers sound, I’m quite disappointed when assumed to be English or German. I have also been called as being from Iceland, Denmark and Norway. While I do not mind these, accused of being English or German points to a total unawareness of Swedish accents and dialects.

Our kids were not born in Sweden but arrived when being very young. We started using Dutch at home, with one day Swedish – to prepare for kindergarten. Well three months at kindergarten, they were as fluent in Swedish as any other two-year-old – and remain to sound Swedish to date. Again, this seemingly confirms Eef’s statement that languages are to be learned at as low age as possible. Many years ago, we met a multicultural family with two kids around five and seven that were fluent in five (yes, 5!) languages. We tried to have our kids take Dutch lessons at school – yes, free again – and Chinese lessons privately. I’ve heard of families forcing kids into certain languages at home but do not adhere to this strategy myself. So your kids can speak some Dutch, but understand everything in Dutch.

For the question if Swedish is closer to Dutch than French is to Dutch, I do not know really. During my high school years, I got a couple of years of French and a couple of years of German language education – only to drop drop both at the first opportunity. But during all high school years English and Dutch were compulsory. Due to lack of interest, my English wasn’t great when I graduated, nor was my Dutch, at least in writing – sorry Dad (my Dad was a Dutch language teacher at my highschool).

Both the Dutch and Swedish, as English I should add, lean heavily on the Latin languages. As such, many a word from these languages can be traced back to the Roman Empire. While the Dutch tend to stick to the spelling, the Swedes adjust the spelling to better fit the Swedish language. The idea behind it is that you should not need to learn another language in order to be a Swedish speaker. Trottoir is a good one, it is written like that in French and in Dutch, but as trottoar in Swedish. With this in mind, translate these Swedish words: fåtölj, entreprenör and portmonnä.

As most (all?) languages, Swedish nouns (I had to look that up) do have am assigned gender. However, the rules on using this are basically the same as in English and Dutch and as such not hard to handle. Eef points out that the rules for these are completely different in French, making it harder to apply them correctly everty time.

That said, the gender of nouns in Swedish may very well  differ from the gender as used in Dutch. This obviously is hard to know, you can learn some, remember others, make a correct assumption or plainly do it wrong. Whatever way, the Swedes do not care.

Now, if we’re talking about my book, which I remember being ma livre in French – livre being female, hence ma instead of mon. This would be min bok in Swedish. Are we talking about my house – house is undecided – then the Swedes will say mitt hus. where mitt indicates it’s male nor female. Again, if you say min hus – which is very wrong – no Swede will hold you accountable.

General observations:

• You can learn any language at any age
• When you’re not a a young child, you more than likely end up with an accent in your newly learned language
• On verbal communication, Swedes seems to be far more flexible than the French
• French speak all languages, as long as it is French
• Swedish generally speak one other language, but – more often than not – badly

Finally:

We did not have any big language issues after we emigrated to Sweden. But, as stated before, we were in our thirties while Eef and Will were already pensioners when they moved abroad. And the Swedes are not very French – which is true both ways. Now, if we’re talking culture, then there’s another thing…

Obviously, all of the above is a matter of opinion, mine in this case.