The Inevitable Intro

I started this blog to help myself and others to just hit the ground running. Well, at least try to. No harm in that, right?

So, a bit of a background story: I come from SouthEast Asia in a country that has groups of people who are pretty much fluent in English. 

Second part of the history: I had a profession which enabled me to work from home and accept calls from clients whenever they needed a change in artistic output. Mostly web, or as a host and production director for social and corporate events. In other words, I did not need to leave my country to go to Europe for a job. Not that doing just that is a bad thing to begin with. I did, however, fall in love with a Swede, and I did not know what I was thinking (haha!) why I moved to Sweden...but hey, I did!

Last part of the history, and trying hard to explain it without prejudice: I thought I could get away with not learning how to speak Swedish, but every day that passed made me realize that this will never be a country whose citizens' conversations with you would be in English, even if they can see that one is a foreigner. They usually assume you should be able to speak Swedish! SHOULD. Addition to this was a visit to a job fair wherein people said I had an impressive CV, and then the killer question came: are you very comfortable with Swedish now? I wanted to say that I was getting there, but I needed a job. NOW. Besides, there will only be one language that the computer will recognize: the computer language depending on what software you use!

Background done, moving forward with the intro: Luckily, I really was almost fluent in Basic Swedish. Thank God!

All immigrants in Sweden have to enroll themselves (funded by the government so it is technically free) to a class called SFI (Swedish for Immigrants). Whether you have a job or lounging around at home, they will find the perfect schedule for you. That is how efficient they are at mandating immigrants to learn Swedish.

I arrived last year, and hitched a job within a month of starting school. I had a boss who just COULD NOT speak English. It was...well, words are inadequate to describe my helplessness. The understandable part was, she was not Swedish. She even walked up to me once and said something like, "You can never speak Swedish". Although, that might be because she thought I have been there awhile and I still could not speak the language. Well, duh.

Anyway, I ended up on the last level of SFI within a year without actually going to school every day like what some did. Some students took half a decade to complete that course, if my sources were correct. Some also completed the entire course in a year by spending half the day in school, and half at work. I just went to work the entire day and two hours a week in school, one night a week. I would really rather earn money, truth be told.

So, with this blog, I would want to share how to learn Swedish fast. At least, I hope so. Share some tricks I picked up along the way. This blog was essentially created to help whiners like me help a fellow student out here online, and to train with at the same time.

I did not create this blog to be better than others. Neither did I start this to show off whatsoever, but to be better for myself alone. If some of the entries will help you, drop me a line. It always feels good to be of help. It would probably make another SFI student make it through another grueling day of mastering the language :)