1. I am inept. The girl at the Telia shop showed me how to access stored numbers when dialing or texting. It's opposite to the way I'm used to. There's a surprise.
2. We did buy the Venus Flytrap and he's earning his keep.
This morning I started Swedish class and it was wonderful! There will be 4 of us - today there were 3: me and 2 French women, Michelle and Florence. Laurence will join us tomorrow.
Our teacher is an older woman named Margareta and I really like her way of working with us. She's a farmer in her off hours, blueberries and vegetables. We started with long vowels and trying to perfect the pronunciation of them. I thought it was very linguistically based, her method, because she ties it all back to the placement of the tongue in relation to the mouth and the teeth, which is exactly how one works in Linguistics. I haven't internalized anything yet but I'll work on memorizing my numbers 1 - 10 (ett till tio). My homework is to bring in a sign or phrase I see around town that I don't understand, so this afternoon I will go for a prowl with my camera and my notebook. This morning, she helped decipher the mysteries of Swedish parking rules. Hopefully, armed with this new knowledge, Peter and I will be able to save some money on parking tickets.
It's an interesting study, examining the styles of our various teachers for other language acquisition. (What do you call it when you already speak a second language so it can't be called swedish as a second language because most of us are working on at least #3?) Peter's teacher started with the usual assortment of phrases: My name is, I'm this old. etc. Elizabeth started with the names of the letters of the alphabet. Andrew is mum on the subject and no help whatsoever. I started with the 9 long vowels, #s 1-10, basic question: How many ___ have we? (Har månge ___ har vi?) As someone who teaches other language acquisition, I've been thinking about how I could modify my program to make it more useful. A lot would depend on purpose: travel, interest, survival? Instead of pleasantries, we should start with necessities of daily life. Don't ask me what those might be - I'm drawing a blank. Banking terms? Internet set- up terms? Binding clauses for phone contracts? It would be useful to know how to say "I'd like this suit cleaned please" or "Can I make a reservation for 4 at 19:00" in Swedish. I can't wait 'til the day I can confidently order my large coffee with skim milk. stor kaffe is about as far as I get at the moment. The non-fat milk part is baffling.
Hej - I'm having fun. I'm so glad to finally have this part started.
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