Hej! Learning the A, B, Cs and Å, Ä, and Ö's!

My journey to Sweden begins very far away and at my computer. I have been reading the blogs of various other expats and gaining a ton of insight into their personal experiences in making the move across the pond. Even while my own adventure is still a ways off, I thought that the process of learning the language was not something I had to wait for.

There are various options out there for learning languages from classes to computer software and even to apps you can download on your phone. When I searched places that offered Swedish classes, I specifically wanted to avoid universities or colleges just because of the price tag generally attached to them. However I discovered that here in Minnesota we have a one of the locations of the American Swedish Institute. Very cool place! Unfortunatley, their Swedish classes are only offered at the time of day that I am busy at work. I am also still in school myself so it simply wasnt going to work out.

Instead I decided to learn on my own and chose to try Rosetta Stone! I have done a couple lessons so far and they definitely start you off slowly. Its been fun! Im excited to continue but I will have to pace myself and balance everything with work and school.

But blah blah blah! Thats all dull and boring! The fun stuff is what I have learned about Swedish so far! The Swedish alphabet is almost identical to our own. Both English and Swedish are quite closely related as they are both Germanic languages.

However some of the key differences is that they have 3 additional vowels that the English alphabet does not have: Å, Ä, and Ö.

Most of the letters are also pronounced similarly although from what I can tell so far, there are two big rules that change certain letter sounds depending on combinations or associations: hard and soft vowels, and consonant combos.

For reference, soft vowels are  e, i, y, ä, ö.
Hard vowels are  a, o, u, å.

Consonant	Hard Vowel	Soft Vowel
C	c in café	c in city
G	g in go	g as the Y in yes
K	k in keep	ch in check

For the additional letters, here are their pronouciations:

å	1. long: rather like o in fore;2. short: like o in yonder	1. språk [language] 2. å´lder [age]
ä	1. long: like ai in fair;2. short: as e in best	1. bä´ra [(to) carry] 2. vän [friend]
ö	1. long A: as eu in the French deux;2. long B (before an r): like uin fur; 3. short: like e in her(unstressed: tell her!)	1. röd [red] 2. kö´ra [(to) drive]  3. sö´nder [broken, in pieces

(Taken from http://www2.hhs.se/isa/swedish/chap9.htm) 

There are a number of combos that make similar sounds but I am not going to list them here. 

And just to throw it out there, its not unknown that Rosetta Stone is quite pricey, however I was informed of a FREE website called Duolingo that is nearly the same thing but FOR FREE! I havent officially tried the site yet as the Swedish chapter is not yet complete. I will try it out and let you know what I think later! Check it out on your own!!!