Language notes part 4

I am enrolled in Swedish classes again, this time not from Folksuniveristet, but from SFI, the official bureaucracy in charge of teaching immigrants how to speak and be Swedish. The advantage of SFI is that it's free. The disadvantage of SFI is that you have no idea what you are going to get.

Joe started an SFI class last spring, but had to stop when his course work at the university began; he had a little bureaucratic adventure trying to get signed up.* My experience was quite the opposite of his: I went in in the late afternoon in mid-January and was seen by a very nice lady after only a 5 minute wait. She took my particulars, filled out a couple forms for me, assessed my Swedish skills quickly, and described the different types of classes I could take. We settled on the Lernia program, which is mostly geared towards language (the other programs include cultural assimilation classes), and is theoretically aimed at "the more educated immigrant." When can I start? I asked, remembering that Joe had lag time of a few months. She looked at the calendar. "This Thursday," she answered.

The first night of class was not inspirational: the building seemed dingy (it isn't, really), and the fact that there's a gospel church in the basement (see the picture at left and please note its name translated into English, under "Gospelkyrkan") worried me a little. There were only three other students, two Pakistani boys who are studying ecology at SLU, and a Ugandan woman a little younger than I. The Pakistanis were complete beginners: the Ugandan (let's call her AB.) had completed the same course I had at Folksuniversitet. That meant the the first night was an endless repetition of "Hej, jag heter..." and such elementary stuff. It had to be done, of course, but I was not impressed (too slow for me, I thought). Nevertheless, I went back for the second class the next week, to find the situation completely turned on its head. Gone were the Pakistanis, to be replaced by an Armenian and a Eritrean, both of whom sounded pretty darn fluent to me. Again, I thought I had better cut bait and drop this class (whoa! 'way too advanced for me) but then AB. showed up, and the teacher (a different one than last week) set the two fluent ones to learning the alphabet at the computer, while she talked to us and gave us our textbooks.

The teacher, M., is a character unlike anyone I've dealt with in Sweden so far. She's older than my previous teacher, who was definately in the young-and-hip crowd. She dresses somewhat theatrically and wears makeup. She makes no bones about separating people into "educated" and "uneducated" (which she considers the Armenian and Eritrean to be, despite their better language skills). She said something to AB. that at first I thought might be horribly racist (but I now think was not). She has eagerly told us that she hoped that we were "more ambitious than most of her students," and she's the first Swede I've met who seems to have any expectations of me at all. Interesting, in other words.

So the way it is now, AB. and I are getting twice weekly 2-hour semi-private tutoring sessions, while the "uneducated" others use the computers to catch up with things like spelling. Strange. But free. Which is a pretty good deal, and worth sticking it out for a while, I think, just to see what happens next if nothing else.

* I ran into German G. from my Folksuniversitet class the next day, and, based on my experience, urged him to go to SFI right away and try to get into my class. But G.'s experience was exactly like Joe's: a long wait at SFI only to be told impatiently that there was no time to interview him properly just now, and in any event he couldn't possibly start a class before March. The lesson? Some bureaucrats are better than others.

Swedish Lessons (almost)

Today my Swedish lessons started… er, sort of, that is.

You may recall that I attended a meeting about taking Swedish classes at the end of June. At the end of that meeting, we were told that we would get a letter detailing the where and when of the class before it started on August 4th. Fast forward to last week, at which point I still had not heard another peep about the class. I started sending some e-mails, but got no response. Finally, Friday afternoon at 3:40 I got a response, telling me that the class started Monday at 12:30, but it had moved from the ever-so-convienently located Polacksbacken to an industrial park on Fyrisborgsgatan—all the way on the other end of town. No explanation was ventured as to why I had not previously been informed of this little tidbit.

So today I made the 30 minute bike trek into Boländernas (plus an extra 10 minutes for the time spent getting lost in the city forest). After some initial idle standing around, we were broken up into two groups of about a dozen each and escorted to a couple of classrooms. There we were presented with textbooks, notebooks, mechanical pencils, and 4-ring binders, and given a schedule for the week. Then there was another prolonged explanation of the course structure, after which I still don't understand how it's supposed to work. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that all the explanation was given in Swedish.

Here's what I could figure out: the class is mostly web-based. There are lessons and exercises online, as well as tests (some essay tests, but also some which require you to record yourself speaking and submit it to an instructor, or to make an appointment to have a Swedish conversation with an instructor via webcam). In addition to this, there are class times. Most of the class time is spent in individual activity, but some of it will be lectures. Some students (those immigrants required by law to take this class, such as political refugees) have to be in the building 30 hours per week; the rest of us only need to come in when we need help, or if we feel like it. The rest can be done online. Except for the lectures, I guess. Not all of which are mandatory. And some of which may be available online.

However it's supposed to work, today's main task was to get us all registered on the online system. Just to prove how new the new classroom was, the whole time I was getting registered there was a guy standing on my desk, armed with a pair of scissors and a cordless drill, doing something to a junction box in the plenum space above me. The registration process involved all of six steps, but each step involved the instructor wandering around for five minutes getting everyone on the same page, so it took half an hour.

That accomplished, we broke for fika, and to let the other students come in to register. There was coffee and mineral water, and cinnamon rolls and clementines. After half an hour of that, we headed back into the classroom, where we waited for another fifteen minutes, at which point our instructor came back, said, "If you are registered for the web course, goodbye!" (in Swedish, naturally), and left. Day over, a few minutes shy of 2:30 PM. I tell you, I don't know how these Swedes keep up with this hectic pace.

Tomorrow we learn how to use the website. By Monday, we might learn some Swedish.

Svenska för Invandrare

One of these days I'll learn that I just can't do things at my own pace in Sweden. I keep falling for the same trap: I wait until I'm ready to start something, at which point I try to sign up for it only to find out that I should have started weeks before. You would think that our experience getting personal numbers, finding an apartment, seeing a doctor, etc., would have been enough to teach me this simple lesson, but alas it is not so.

Case in point: Swedish lessons. Jennifer just started her second 6-week course this past Monday. It's a nice setup, but a little on the pricey side if your employer isn't picking up the tab (which hers is). There is another alternative, though. Svenska för Invandrare, or SFI, offers a course which is free to anyone who has a personal number and a need to learn Swedish. The only drawback is that the class is full time, so you can't take it while working. Perfect! I didn't sign up right away because I didn't want to get tied down for a couple of weeks while we were apartment hunting, and then there were the weeks spent setting up the apartment, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, by the time April approached, I figured it was time to get me signed up for some lessons, so I looked up the Uppsala SFI office online and headed down there to register. Unfortunately it was a Thursday afternoon, and the office naturally closes for the weekend at 1 on Thursdays. Undaunted, I returned the next week during the posted business hours, only to find out that they were closed for the week. No problem, plenty of time.

The next week they were open, and I sat down with an administrator-type and filled out an application to the program. When it was done, she handed me an appointment card for the next week with a time and an instructor's name. The card only had a start time, though, so I foolishly enquired how long the class would be, how often it would meet, etc. The nice lady then explained that the time wasn't for a class meeting at all, but rather an appointment to talk to an instructor about signing up for a class. OK, so things weren't moving along at quite the clip I had expected. I showed up for my appointment the next week (this was April 15th, in case you're keeping track), and chatted with a gentleman named Staffan for a while, after which he handed me a study plan, which he said I would need to bring with me to my first day of class. We had a couple of sort of awkward minutes where he seemed to think that we were done, while I was still waiting to learn things like, "When does the class meet?" and, "Where do I go?" When it became clear that I didn't understand what was going on, he explained that he had put my name in a queue, and I would get a letter from the school that actually taught the courses once there was an opening. He mentioned that there was a class starting soon, but that I almost certainly wouldn't be in that. He did think that there was an off chance that I would get a letter before May 15th.

Well, I just got the letter. First of all, let me just say that when sending letters to students who are trying to sign up for Swedish for Absolute Beginners, writing the whole thing in Swedish is, at best, frustrating. Nevertheless, after a little time with a dictionary I have learned this: the queue I've been in so far was to attend a mandatory informational meeting, during which different class options will be discussed (apparently, Edda, the school which has been teaching Uppsala's SFI classes, just split into three different schools, each with a different goal, and I have to choose with which school I would like to register).

I can only assume that the outcome of this meeting will be that I have my name placed on one of three new queues, after which I can wait for the actual class to start sometime before the ice caps melt.

Language Notes Part 3

On Monday and Wednesday nights, I take the #18 bus out to the building pictured above, and attend Swedish A1 for Beginners. The class is offered through Folkuniversitetet, which is sort of like a nation-wide community college, with campuses (or buildings at least) in all major cities. My class of 11 people includes a Spaniard, a Moldavian, a Greek, a French, an Italian, a Chinese, a Japanese, and three Germans. The class is therefore taught in English, of course. How strange it must be for these other students, to learn a foreign language in a foreign language. But everyone speaks English, and most of them speak at least one more language as well.

We have all learned a bit about each other, as we go around the room and practice introducing ourselves ("Jag heter Jennifer, och jag kommer från Michigan," I said on Day 1, so for a brief time the teacher though I was Canadian). Most other students are associated with Uppsala University, and several are scientists. The Moldavian woman is studying law in Stockholm, and had to take some sort of exams for four days in a row over the Easter break ("But Easter isn't really for a month yet, so I don't care," she said, and the Greek guy nodded in agreement).

This last week I managed a fake phone call with one of the Germans, during which we properly greeted each other, inquired as to what each other were doing, and arranged to meet at some later time and place. In a lull, I asked whether German or English was more helpful to her in learning Swedish. "German, certainly," she said. "But they pronounce things so oddly."

I haven't taken a class of any kind for a long time now, and I must say I have a new appreciation for all you community college teachers out there. It is true that we students are, for the most part, self-motivated; however... how shall I put this... we are all individuals, as well, with widely differing personalities and abilities and agendas. Riding herd on such a bunch can't be too easy, but our teacher T. manages with humor and patience. I like her very much, even if she does keep insisting that we try again to make this peculiarly Swedish sound, the voiceless palatal-velar fricative, indicated in Swedish by the letters sj, sk, or skj.

So what does the "sje-sound" sound like? I thought perhaps it sounded a bit like a Chinese "hw" kind of sound, but the Chinese student disagrees and struggles with it as much as anyone. At Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons, one commentator described it as "trying to hiss like a cat while gurgling." T. insists quite rightly that we must recognize it when others say it, although we ourselves can get away with just making a "sh" sound instead... "... if we're sissies," is the unspoken end I hear to that sentence. But perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this way. One of the Germans refuses to do it at all.

Language Notes Part 2

Consider the following joke:

"A termite walks into a bar, and says 'So! Where's the bartender?'"

If you laughed, or groaned, or wished you hadn't read it at all, you are probably a native English speaker. 

At Tuesday's afternoon fika, V. and another student, Z., and I got into a discussion of puns, which I accidently started by referring to the polls that had just opened on the east coast. V. gave me a very strange look, then his face cleared and he said "Oh, polls, polls. Right. I thought you meant poles, and were referring to the East Pole or something." V. said he considers puns a high form of humor. So I asked if he'd like to hear a really bad one, he said yes, the worse the better, so I whipped on the one above. 

While V. and Z. were considering this, S. showed up, and asked what was going on. I was asked to repeat the joke, which I did, and tried this time to emphasize the word "bar" in "bartender," and perhaps even put a little bit of a pause in between the two syllables. Now I was alone in a room with three students, all completely mum, all staring distractedly in different directions. Having just read the book "Culture Shock: Sweden," I have learned that Swedes in general do not reason aloud, but prefer to consider silently. Still, I challenge my American readers, you just try sitting quietly for several minutes waiting for people to get your joke. Not easy! I was just about to burst when S. saved me by admitting that he didn't get it. So I explained, and there was the sort of half-hearted "Oh yes, oh yes, I get it now" that you always get when you have to explain a joke.

Fast forward to today's afternoon fika. Out of the blue, V. says to me "It's very funny, but none of my students got your joke either." Students, what students? It turns out that V. that is the technical coordinator for an undergraduate bioinformatics class, and they sometimes have discussion meetings in the virtual world. He told this joke to his class... and now the joke is being passed around the department, and to their friends, and etc. etc. as an example of a Pun. And I now probably have a reputation as a teller of really bad jokes. So I'm appealing for your support now—I need more bad puns! If you've got some, please feel free to leave them as a comment.

On another bright note, somebody finally said something to me that I've been secretly wanting to hear for a long time. Another postdoc, VP., came by my door at about 3:15 as I was deeply in the middle of a fascinating analysis, and said "Come on, come on. Coffee, coffee. You are not very smart. You've been here more than a month now, and you still don't understand fika? You must have fika. You Americans work too hard. You're in Europe now."

Ahhhh.

Language Notes Part 1

Everybody new that I meet asks me where I am from. I always say "Michigan," and they almost always ask, "Oh, you're American?" I would have thought that it was obvious I was American the moment I opened my mouth and spoke, but apparently not. Joe points out that to them I'm just one more person who can't speak Swedish, so I speak English, with some kind of accent. (And apparently several people who I had talked to before thought I was Brazilian, because of the pennants of two São Paulo soccer teams hanging in my office, which are visible from the hallway.)

Similarly, my inability to discriminate among Swedish accents surprises them. Early in the evening a couple weeks ago, it came up with my doctoral student office mate, S., and the student in the next office over, V., who had come over to visit. Since I didn't really know S. and V. well, I asked where they were from. They told me, and V. said "You really can't tell the difference in the way we speak?" I confessed I couldn't, and asked them to demonstrate, but they refused on the grounds that it would be fake to do it knowing I was listening for it. Then suddenly the Swedish Chef came up (for reasons that will become clear), when out of the blue V. said that the Swedish Chef is funny and all but that he just didn't sound Swedish. 

Applaud my forbearance, gentle readers. I bit my lip and did not say what I was thinking, which is that yes, Swedish does in fact sound kind of like that.

Thankfully, S. disagreed with V. on this point. He had heard that the Swedish Chef was based on an actual Swedish cook's guest appearance on American TV, long ago, who got nervous when the camera started rolling and started muttering under his breath in Swedish. V. said no, he didn't believe it. S. explained to me that the cook in question (Lars Bäckman) is from same state as S. is, and therefore has the same accent. V. said no, no, not even S. ever sounds like that. S. said that he could easily imagine talking to himself like that, if he were nervous, or alone and reciting instructions to himself. He proceeded to demonstrate, pretending to be mixing something in a bowl and muttering.

I laughed politely at this, but laughing politely also took self-discipline, because the truth is he sounded exactly like the Swedish Chef, and I was about to bust a gut. A "Muppet Show" writer denies that Bäckman was Henson's inspiration, but I think I'll believe S. on this one. Even V. admitted that S. sounded just about right. Whether Bäckman was the inspiration or not, there can be no further doubt: the Swedish Chef is from Dalarna, home of colorful wooden horses and a lovely sing-song accent. I just hope I can resist ever asking S. to do that Swedish Chef thing again.