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Swedish is one of those languages that is only spoken by a few million people, but also one of the most popular for second language learners. This is because knowing Swedish can act as a gateway to both Danish and Norwegian, which both share very similar vocabulary and grammatical structure.
So, is Swedish easy to learn? Let's take a look.
How different is Swedish to English?
Swedish and English do share a few similarities, which could make learning Swedish easy. However, there are a few differences between the languages that may trip people up.
For example, in English, when we use a 'definite' article we say "the". However, in Swedish, you never say "the", you will, instead, add a couple of letters onto the end of a noun. Let's give an example:
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In Swedish, 'mus' means "mouse"
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en mus means "a mouse"
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musen means "the mouse"
Things get even more confusing when you use plurals or definite plurals. You don't get that with English. You tend to add an S on the end and that makes it plural.
This means that learning Swedish vocabulary can be a bit trickier. This is because there will be multiple ways to say a single word depending on the situation that it is being used in. Although, to be honest with you, some words are predictable and once you have the rules in your head, you will only have to learn the base noun and everything else will come naturally.
Swedish does have a few similarities, though. There are some words that overlap with English, or at least so similar to English that you will have a rough idea of what they mean just by looking at them. This is the same for most Western European languages.
Perhaps the only tripping point between English and Swedish, at least at the start, will be the additional letters in the alphabet. They have quite unique sounds, but Swedish pronunciation is pretty easy to nail once you understand these letters. Most Swedish words are pronounced exactly how they are written.
Is it easy to learn Swedish?
Despite it not being a widely spoken language outside of Sweden, there will be a surprising number of resources out there that you can tap into. We have plenty of tutors here on Justlearn to help you out too.
Picking up the basics of Swedish isn't too hard at all. Swedish is a language that is very 'rule-heavy' and it barely deviates from these rules, so once you have learned the basics of grammar, it is easy to learn the various pieces of vocabulary to fit around it. Obviously, the latter part will take time. However, you could feasibly pick up the basic grammar rules within a couple of weeks. This means that you may be able to start having basic conversations in the next-to-no time at all.
Swedish certainly isn't the hardest language in the world to learn if you know English. It can be tricky at times. However, it is a language that you will see regular progress on and, if you work with the right tutor, there is no reason why you couldn't be speaking this language to a decent level within 6-months, and fully conversational within a year.
