swedish/svenska

Hello again,

Just thought I'd type up something to pass the time.

The A1 (first part of the semester) is approaching faster than I thought, my final exams are coming up in few weeks which means I have to start studying which is what I'll be doing tomorrow. I'm seriously looking forward to October 28th, when I take the final exam for my Macroeconomics class... because after that exam, I will not have any more math-related classes for my remaining time in Jönköping AND Ryerson :)... and my classes will (should) be much more fun and interesting after November.

Yesterday, Elisabet and I went to watch few deaf ice hockey games between stockholm, örebro and finland, Finland was the better team yestserday winning both of their games. Then later on the night, we went to the deaf house (club), many deaf people went.... met lots of new people... it was fun.

You know what's the hardest part for me learning the written sweden?.... its those letters, å, ä, ö... they might seem alot like an 'a' or 'o' but when spoken those letterrs sounds veeeery different so you cannot just say 'a' instead of 'å' or the word will have entire different meaning. My biggest problem is recognizing those letters and remembering to use them at the appropriate time. For example, the word "Sök" means "search"... When I read that word I automatically think of "Sok" but then I have to re-read the word again to ensure I didnt misread it,... I think I'm getting better at recognizing those three letters now but I've still got a long way to go.

For the sign language part, I think I'm getting there :) I remember I had a such hard time understanding the differences between "still" and "still"... yeah, I know I said "still" twice heh, but the Swedes have two different signs for that word for that the word has two different meanings.

Still #1 example - He's still running! (in this case, the "still" refers to the continous activity)

Still #2 example - No matter which road you get, it will still take you an hour to get home. (in this case, the "still" refers that the result is still the same no matter which option you take)

You ASL-users know that for both cases, the same sign of "still" are used but not in sweden, there are two different signs for "still",.. it was very confusing for me but now I think I'm getting the hang of it.

There's still some words and signs I don't know when is the appropriate time to use it, such as "you", sweden has "du" and "dig"... it means "you"

There is one general sign that Swedes has too much use for, I don't know how to explain what the sign looks like but it looks similar to saying "please" or "my"... get what I mean?... anywa in Sweden that sign can be used for "my", "hope", "love", "what do you think?", "want", "like"... all of those words has very similar signs its easy to get confused with one or other word... they rely on the lips movement very much. It's harder for me because I don't know all of the swedish words and much less their lips movement, sometimes I have to ask again to clarify which sign they just used :)

nevertheless, yup, I've promised myself that by January I should be almost fluent in swedish sign language as a second language (my ASL will always be better of course! :) )

Anyway, its getting late, I better shut up now... I'll write more later in the week..

have fun
bg0ur3