Why did I not think of checking youtube...?
I seriously believe that you will always be able to distinguish a native speaker from someone who learned Swedish later in life, no matter how long that someone has been living in S. It's just too damn hard. But I see where you are coming from. It probably shouldn't sound that bad. After having heard her on that video it's obvious even to me what you were talking about.
Naturally, I don't find it as horrible as you do though
(You should have witnessed just 5 min of a conversation course I have been to. There were ppl who had been learning/talking Swedish for 20 yrs or so.....and I can tell you that even my ears bled
)
Thus my (not so new) theory: Swedes don't aim to be polite when they are switching to English, they simply don't want to suffer from hearing their language being disparaged.
Well, frankly, you can always tell a non-native speaker in any language, particularly if they've learned the language later in life. And if Swedes don't want their "precious" language "defiled," then they're just going to have to find a place to hide or get used to immigrants and non-native speakers. Often times on the phone, I think it's probably just more of an issue of impatience. They want things to move faster and if you're stumbling over words or something, they just think it'll be easier for all involved.
In defense of Silvia, how much Swedish do you think she actually speaks? Probably not a shit ton.. Plus, did she learn it later in life? That probably doesn't help, particularly if she's not terribly stoked about the language at all. Does the king know German? He probably does given that men of his age were regularly learning German for educational purposes. I wouldn't be surprised if they spoke German or English to each other.
Several people have commented that they think it's a shame that my girlfriend and I don't speak that much Swedish to each other. Firstly, I think a lot of those relationships are inertia, that is to say, that we tend to continue doing what we did before with said person. When I met Kim, she and I really couldn't have communicated in Swedish. Of course, I got better, but we'd already been living with each other for nearly a year by the time I was getting to the point where I could go out and really socialize in Swedish without it being a constant onslaught of "Vad sa du?" Could you operate in a relationship with a person you couldn't communicate with? Sure, now we speak a lot more Swedish to each other. Yesterday we spoke mostly Swedish to each other, but some days that's not the case. And often times in emotional conversations and very deep and serious conversations we operate in English because that's the language we got to know each other in.
On the other hand, I am very insistent when we hang out with her friends and stuff that we operate in Swedish. I refuse to speak English with anyone who isn't her. But in more intimate situations, we operate in English because that's a thread that's run through our relationship. You don't have to buy it, but I think you'd find that you do the same things if you were ever in the kind of relationship we're in.
Shit, even my sister, who's lived in the Netherlands for 12 years, is totally fluent in Dutch, has two children who operate in Dutch with her, teaches the damn language and is mistaken for fluent like 99% of the time still speaks in English with her husband because they met in college when he was on exchange in the States. I think that's just how it goes.
My honest hope is that we'll reach a point where it's entirely natural to operate in either language. And it's better now than it was before, we can joke and talk normally.. but it still doesn't feel as natural as English. And, that's what
she says about it, too. So don't think that it's that my Swedish sucks bad enough that she just doesn't want to hear her language "disparaged" or that somehow I insist on speaking English with her, because I don't. We just operate in a comfort zone.
Lefay82 said:
i've understod only these words from what the interviewer said in her first question: känner, drottningen, mycket, eventuella brollop, om hon ska gifta sig, hur, varit
but i was able to notice that the queen doesn't have that fluent and melodic tone as a native swede.
The melody is hard to imitate for those not born with it and it feels so ridiculous when I do it.. like, it's super exaggerated.
Also, the hardest part of the language, contrary to what I said earlier, is understand Swedes when they get going. So many words get sucked into other words. It becomes difficult to differentiate what people are saying.
