Tongue tied tuesdays

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon related to my learning of Swedish recently, namely I speak noticeably better Swedish after the first day of the school week than on day one.

Now this may be obvious to the point of being banal, but on Saturday, Sunday and Monday I don't get much chance to practice my language skills. Although my partner is Swedish, and we've established I've reached the point where I can actually hold my end of a conversation up, often she's too tired from working or we forget. This results in us largely speaking in English.

Although I watch some Swedish television, the majority of what's broadcast on television is mostly U.S. imports or the slurry of British crime series.

I do watch some Swedish shows, and a particular favourite of mine is Färjan, which is a docu-soap about Viking Lines' 'Cinderella' cruise ship and its staff and passengers.

I have a guilty pleasure for docu-soaps, but the real attraction for me in watching 'Färjan' is Swedes behaving badly on what is essentially a booze cruise to Finland and back. For a foreigner it offers up a vision of how ordinary swedes behave, and misbehave particularly when the stimuli of alcohol is added.

If you watch it look out for smooth barman Håkan, singing ship's steward and entertainment officer Per Nyberg (complete with, I'm told, impenetrable småland accent and who bears a distinct likeness to Welsh comedian Rob Brydan pictured below on the right)











The cast is rounded off with the detestable little hitler with handcuffs, security officer Anita, who is frequently filmed meting out her own brand of particularly heavy handed justice to inebriated Swedes. One can only hope she isn't as dour off camera, and the show is cut in such a way to depict her as an archetype.

In order to remedy the Tuesday morning linguistic equivalents of cold starts, I'm thinking of attending the language cafe in central malmö. This offers the opportunity to practice Swedish with volunteers. As a concept, I think it sounds great, and shows the effort that the majority of Swedes are making to help us immigrants fit in and improve our language skills.

I hope this will provide me with a mental work out which will leave me ready for the school week. I'll try and find a link, and report back when I've had my first experience.