Kroppdelar

I was the only student who showed up for Swedish today. That was both good and bad: good because I got the teacher all to myself and could therefore go as fast as I wanted, bad because when I walked out the front door this morning, I left my stack of books and notes for Swedish class sitting on the kitchen counter where I'd put them so that I wouldn't forget to stick them in my backpack. My plan had been to look on one of the guys' papers for today's class, a plan which obviously doesn't work if neither of the guys is there.

It was actually really productive. She had prepared a list of body parts. I didn't really need the vocabulary (although there were a few words that I didn't know), but we ended up using the list to really work on pronounciation. I was able to take the time to ask questions like "When you say that is the sound sitting at the back of your throat or on your tongue?" and "Is your tongue touching the back of your teeth when you say that?", then take the time to mold my own muscles and moouth to fit the descriptions. It really helped, too. I feel like I have a better feel for the vowel (and I just sat here for like 2 minutes trying to remember the English word for "vokal") formation in Swedish in opposition to German.

This is a really difficult thing for me. I've been told many, many times that my Swedish has a German accent, which is haha-cute the first few times, but pretty embarassing when you think about it. It is my goal for my Swedish to become as accent-free as my German and I don't just mean "no American accent". I've spent a lot of time softening my "s" and removing the "sh" sound from the letter combinations "st" and "sp" and that's gotten better (although "s" is something I have to be thinking about. As soon as I start to go on autopilot, forget it-- we're talking Wienerschnitzel and Sauerkraut.) But vowel sounds are sneakier. The most difficult for me is "u". I can hear the difference, but I have a lot of difficulty forming the proper shapes with my mouth.

It seems like she's pretty unhappy with the work being turned in by the other students in the class, though. At the beginning of class, she was very grim and started with a mini-lecture about the quality of work not being worth the three credits we (they-- I'm auditing) are getting for the class. Then she stopped mid-sentence and said something to the effect of "Well, you aren't the one who really needs to hear this anyway," and changed the subject. When it became clear that the guys weren't just running late, but weren't coming, she made some remark about how they were probably just afraid to get their midterms back.

I don't know how serious the other guys are about learning Swedish, although I do really like them both. I know for me it's something that gives me the chance to stretch my intellectual legs in a way that actually has some reward for the effort, which is a nice change of pace from law school. It's also a chance for me to do something that I really love. And I've already gone to so much trouble and expense that it seems silly not to squeeze every last bit of learning that I can out of the class. Sometimes it's a little frustrating for me when the others don't go as fast as I would like to, but I've also got more Swedish under my belt than either of them, so it would be incredibly snotty of me to fault them for that. Lord knows I wasn't the star of UISS.

And as much as I disliked Ylva, I have to admit that I worked my butt off and learned a lot in class. I feel like I might have learned more if I had been permitted to remain in Kalle's class, but socially, Ylva's class was probably a better fit for me. So I guess that evens things out a little bit. I know that Lune's a little disappointed in the results of her stay at UISS, and I understand why she feels the way that she does. I share some of her criticisms of the program. But overall, I think it was very worth it for me. In fact, if I thought I could afford to do it, I would absolutely go back next summer. It won't happen, seeing as it's time to, oh, you know, GET A JOB and start building a resume that might actually get me hired at some point in time. But if I were to, say, win the lottery in the next 5 or 6 months, I would go back and spend the summer picking apart my vowels and struggling with partikelverben.

Anyway, the status of class next semester is still up in the air. The teacher is going to see if the course could somehow be defined as a graduate course so that I might have hope of getting credit for it. She's also hoping to get a structured text book and have a meeting time more than once a week. I'm semi-stoked about the first one, since the text that she's picked for approval by the department is not your typical dialogue-based language text. It's a book about the history of Sweden up to modern times, including political developments and so on. The second part I am very much in favor of. Once a week for one hour is just not enough, especially when you have to share that hour with other students. We're all basically nice people, so none of us wants to hog the class time, which means that we often sit around the table politely waiting for someone else to answer the question instead of just answering it ourselves. I am especially concerned with not being "That Girl" who shouts out every answer and hogs all the attention, so that no one else ever gets a chance. At the same time, I worry that we're just bogging ourselves down with our niceness (it's actually quite a nice problem to have, if you think about it: EVERYONE'S TOO NICE! Oh, WOE IS ME!)

And now that I have to gå på Toa and my stjärt is going numb from sitting in these stupid library chairs, it is time to slutar blogging för idag.