Pratar Engelska och Svenska

As a Speech Pathologist I have been dazzled by the English skills of even the youngest Swedes. Students of 8 years of age have been able to have basic conversations with us, and have done so with not even the slightest hint of any accent other than English or American. Words are articulated perfectly, except where there is occasional confusion about our insane English spelling. I was talking to a Swede who was telling me about a diet in which you eat a lot of soap. She immediately realised the error and had a laugh, and since then I have realised how many words must be difficult to learn in English. I mean how can you know to pronounce the word "soup" as soop, not soap or sowp, when we have other words like "cantaloupe"?

The young Primary students we have visited have been enthusiastic and brave about practising their English, while the upper Primary and lower secondary students tend to be shy (in spite of their competence with English). By the time students reach upper Secondary School they are able to have conversations with us about anything at all. I have been intrigued as to why this is the case, even when Swedes haven't spent time in an English speaking country.

Aside from the fact that English is the most common language other than Swedish to be taught at school, most English television programs shown here have Swedish subtitles, which allow children to hear English words from a very young age. Believe it or not, there are several Australian television shows which are well known here (and they don't include "Neighbours" or "Home and Away" - amazing). The most commonly mentioned programs are "Flying Doctors", "Border Control" and "Rain Shadow". I have even seen "We Can Be Heroes" and "The Librarian". In many other European countries, English television programs are dubbed, which means that children aren't able to develop the same speech-sound recognition, or hear different accents.

It has been a good exercise for me to try and learn the very difficult sound in words like "sju" (Swedish for 7), and town names "Skövde", "Sävsjö" and "Eksjö". It's taken quite some time to work on the sound in isolation, and now I'm practising it at the word and phrase level. The sound is a bit like a double "hh". We are proud of Jamie who is now doing his speeches in Swedish. His tip to make this difficult sound was to imagine clearing a fly from the back of your throat at a posh dinner party.

I have also been interested to learn how Swedish language and learning happens in early childhood. To start with, there is a year of paid maternity (or paternity) leave, which means that parents can really focus on their little ones in their first year. After this time, there is affordable "nursery school" which can be attended from the age of 1 to 6. Interestingly, when Primary School teachers are trained, they are qualified to teach all ages from 1 to 12, which gives them a broad understanding of childhood development. Children start Primary School at 7 years and they don't start reading and writing until this year, even though foundation literacy and numeracy skills are focussed on in nursery school through play.