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Now that we’re on our 3rd app (wow!) we have some traditions! One of them – and one of my favorites- is to talk about how we selected the words for each board. From language to language, we select different words, based on the same theme. We take into account cultural aspects. We’re not telling you, for instance, how to translate your current American apartment into Swedish, but how a Swedish person would describe their apartment, in Sweden. Mary and I discussed this at a party recently (where some of our very important Bingueau discussions occur). Most travel apps and language guides help you discuss your Western life in foreign language. What it leaves out, or what it leaves the student to learn later, is how the culture describes itself.

Me, coffee, wifi in Gamla Stan, Stockholm

For example, in Sweden, coffee is very important. Documented various places, but mostly I’m reminded of this on my Facebook feed, when around 10PM Pacific Time, my Swedish friends start bragging about their lovely steaming cups of kaffe. So in the “in the kitchen” list, I made sure coffee maker, coffee pot, coffee, etc. were all there. I also think that in learning a foreign language, seeing the root, endings, and compound words with a common root help learn a grammar lesson almost imperceptively. Kaffekanna, tekanna, and kaffebryggare, teaches you through practice and repetition the endings for adding “pot”, “machine,” the differences between tea and coffee, and other suffixes, includign identifying the root. And, in later lists, this is apparent with clothing, clothes washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, etc.

As I also did for Russian Bingo, for climates that have serious winters, I made sure to include a set of winter clothes- heavy coat, light coat, etc. Tights, vs. nylons.  This is a classic example of why we include words that are important to Swedes vs. describing our life in Swedish. I live in San Francisco, I never have to wear a serious winter coat, nor tights, hats, unless it’s a fashion choice. The reality of living through a Swedish winter without good boots, or a Ukraine winter, would be ridiculous. Being able to describe that is key to knowing the language.

To be honest, adding the audio was an afterthought, but now it’s my favorite feature of the game. At one of our favorite SF cafes, Chameleon, Mary suggested recording sounds for our budding iPhone game. She recorded and added the sounds to our code repository, I integrated them with the touch events, and the next time we met, I was eager to show her the resulting app. I felt it had improved the whole experience almost twofold. With Swedish, this is even more apparent. Because it is so similar to English, we can lull ourselves into thinking we know it. more than any other language I’ve shown my friends- Spanish, Russian, and Chinese (all in development)- Swedish is the one they are the most confident about, without any schooling. It’s the audio that tells them they don’t know it, ha. Of course they initially point to “kök,” “what does that mean?” thinking it’s…. that c-word. Our native speaker Håkan says, “shoohk” and they are chastened.

Viking house in Denmark, shaped like a ship

I had quite a back and forth with Håkan about “tak.” Some of my sources said “roof” with a second definition as “ceiling,” and “innertak” being a primary meaning for ceiling. He had told me “tak” was OK for ceiling, and in further discussion, he added that there is a technical word that building contractors use to define ceiling, “innertak” but in the vernacular most people say “tak.” I’m wondering if it’s because historically roofs were alpine design, with no lower internal roof because that would prevent heat from descending. Note this Danish Viking building, shows the lack of ceiling and only a roof, for heat purposes. Having toured Russian rural houses, they also didn’t have ceilings, only roofs, and were similarly within a larger barn building, to manage the heat. Of course there are debates on how much history has an effect on modern word usage.

At the Skånan farm

I have always wanted to speak my grandfathers’ language. That’s not a mistakenly placed apostrophe.  I have two Swedish grandfathers, my farfar (father’s dad) and my morfar (mother’s dad).  Farfar was from a village not far from the large industrial southern town, Malmö near Denmark and Copenhagen, in the Swedish province of Skåne. The morfar is from a remote rural village near Härnösand, which is on the Bothnian coast. It’s so interesting having family from two very different parts of Sweden.

Härnösand from 1700s

My morfar was banned from speaking Swedish in the home, as his parents were worried he wouldn’t fit in, in America. His father had emigrated from Skåne, the eldest son of a farming family, who left for America, leaving his brother- 2nd son of 10 children- to inherit. These are the relatives I visited, Ingrid and Östin. My mother and I had been corresponding with Ingrid for quite some time, as she had done tons of genealogical research. I visited in January 2009 to a snow-less Skåne, and proceeded to speak Swinglish with her and Östin for a few days. I was very charmed by Sweden, which fueled my desire to learn the language even more, stateside.

While Ingrid spoke English very well, many times I was with my cousin who spoke almost no English. He taught me, on a train ride to Copenhagen, the vowels of Swedish, along with some phrases. As you may or may not known, Skånan Swedish has very distinct vowel differences, as well as some consonants. I admit that while I am personally interested in learning this dialect, the commonly taught Swedish accent is from speakers in Stockholm. I was teased pretty heavily by a Stockholm friend when I attempted pronouncing some words. We’re thinking of adding a few vocabulary boards by a Stockholm speaker so you can see the dialectal variation between regions. That’s another blog post, ha.

Malmö castle, currently housing the Malmö museum

One of the hardest things for me, in learning Swedish, is how it can tease you with cognates. I felt like I was constantly getting the gist of a conversation, when in reality, I couldn’t translate one word.  English and Swedish are so similar, yet that can make it harder to learn. There were periods where I listen to Swedish and actually convince myself I understand. It’s a hard area to negotiate- picking out the words and realizing that they are truly foreign. It’s almost like a dialect of English that you can lure yourself into thinking you know.

My favorite language lessons while in Sweden:

• We had horseradish soup for dinner, and that was a very difficult word to decipher. Mostly because it’s never sold in America in its raw form. The resulting word is : pepper soup, pepparrot soppa, pepper + root. Our word, of course, makes no sense horse + radish, ha.
• Looking out onto a beautiful winter lake, and squirrels are running around the trees. My cousin tries to find the English word for squirrel, we look it up, and it’s a cute word-  oak + black grouse (ekorre)

Proud displays of their largest catches

More blog posts I’ve written about Sweden, mostly about food:

• Split-pea Soup Thursdays
• Fish Salad & Horseradish (also a photo of my Dad who is Swedish-American, of the Northern people)

Download!

The developers of Le Bingueau, the French learning iPhone app, have created a new language tool- Swedish Bingo. Three boards cover vocabulary that would be useful around the house, in the kitchen and getting dressed or shopping for clothes. The app sets it apart from other iPhone apps by being only 99¢ – download now and give it a whirl! We’d love to know what you think.

If you’ve used our other apps, you might appreciate some new upgrades and features we’ve added to Swedish Bingo:

• Rounded web2.0 wet-looking buttons
• In-app links to other Bingueau iPhone apps
• The winning words stay on your screen, and all other words fall away.
• Informational bit on the architectural element we chose to highlight in the icons. For Swedish, it’s Katerina Kyrka, an important church in southern Stockholm.
• When you switch from Swedish-to-English and English-to-Swedish, you remain with the same selected tiles, so you don’t have to start over.

To learn more about our other iPhone apps- visit the pages linked above, French’s Le Bingueau, and Russian Bingo. If you’d like to follow our news and events, checkout our Twitterstream: @bingueau. We’ll always post new developments on Swedish Bingo’s own page, linked above, and here.

Here is a sample of the response we’ve gotten so far- and it’s so great that the app is helping folks learn Swedish!

I have been trying to learn Swedish for several years now and having language learning turned into a game like this makes the learning process really fun and effective. A great vocabulary builder.