Hello and welcome to this week’s update on my attempt at learning a new language from scratch. For those new here, the language is Swedish, and here are my updates from Week_1, Week_2, and Week_3. I try to keep these posts light, and I hope they give you some fresh ideas, even if you’re not learning any language at all. And if you are learning, I’ve even added some mega-turbo-wham tips below. Nu kör vi!
I watched my first movie in svenska!
So, small achievement, but I’ve watched my first movie in Swedish (with English subtitles, of course).
The movie’s called The Conference, it’s on Netflix, and it’s this horror comedy about a murderer getting rid of a bunch of annoying municipality clerks. I’ve worked with many public sector entities in my life, and some of the tropes in the movie hit close to home. Might not be the best movie in the world, but it’s pretty funny.
I watched it with English subtitles (otherwise I’d understand 10% at most) and I’ll be rewatching it at some point with Swedish subtitles. Speaking of subtitles, I was surprised to learn that there’s some research pointing out that they might actually hinder the retention of information. Even if it’s true, I imagine it being a concern only for extremely advanced learners (who might just say goodbye to subtitles).
took a deeper dive into the research (check it out if you’re interested):By the way, there’s a dirty secret for you — sometimes I'll even put subtitles in a target language over content in a language I know perfectly well (I’ve watched The Office with Swedish subtitles this weekend, for example). It might sound counterintuitive and counterproductive, but for me at least it's a good way of getting certain "set phrases" engrained. You get the "oh, so that's how they say X in this language" moment a lot with this method. Wouldn’t you want to know the equivalent of “That’s what she said!” in your target language?
Funnily enough, there’s a Swedish adaptation of The Office called Kontoret (which I’ll definitely watch at some point).
Probably not so surprising when you learn that there are 13 international versions (that’s not counting the US and the UK originals). There’s even one set in Saudi! I don’t remember much from my Arabic classes but the setting looks exactly like the Scranton office, just everyone’s wearing thawbs!
Why doing something every day beats not doing anything
I don’t want to turn this section into an Atomic Habits-esque collection of platitudes but hear me out:
Doing something every day is better than not doing anything.
With language learning, the “something” part can be infinitesimally small. Listen to one lesson. Watch one video. Write down twenty new words. Put on Swedish subtitles for an episode of The Office you’ve watched a million times because it helps you make it through the darkest of days (that sounded oddly specific, sorry).
You get my point. No matter how unstructured your approach is, your “gains” compound over time. Even if you’re feeling that you’re having a super hectic day, you can just start swearing in your target language, and in my book that would count as progress.
I’ve known people who’d go to language classes for years but made little progress, because all of their “learning” was limited to the 2 hours in class + 20 minutes of homework. Don’t be that person. Do something every day. [this is kind of a self-pep-talk but you can apply it to yourself, dear reader].
Till next time!
Great post , as usual! Here are a few rambling thoughts I had while reading:
1. Congratulations on your first Swedish movie (and The Office in Swedish)! Did you pick anything up while watching?
2. SNL did The Office in Japanese which was pretty funny. I probably should try to watch it with Japanese dubs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmTfxyoEqAc&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive
3. I tend to put on subtitles even in English movies because people mumble.
4. I'm currently re-reading Atomic Habits cause it's just that time of the year. In fact, I was just thinking of how little things with language learning should compound, no matter how small. :)
Yes! I wish there were more people reading this newsletter because it's SO good and helpful!