I taught myself Swedish when I was 24. I could read young adult books after a couple of years of study. Had I not had a mental illness, I might have even moved to Lindsborg, KS. I was unemployed for a few years following the 2008 great recession, so I spent it learning Swedish. I have never spent a cent to study Swedish, except for the $25 I spent buying the three Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books in Swedish from someone on Craigslist. I have been extremely frugal in my pursuit of learning Swedish. But that was the great recession, and now it’s almost 18 years later. What would happen if I threw some money at this hobby?
I have not been reading Swedish for probably 15 years. My skills have faltered, and I have forgotten much of my vocabulary. However, the ebook ecosystem is so much more robust than it was in 2009, and now I have e-ink ereaders and public domain Swedish books (from Project Gutenberg or Project Runeberg) in modern Swedish without antiquated spellings. There are probably Creative Commons Swedish ebooks too. I was not into ebooks in 2009. My “ereader” was an OLPC back then. Now I have ipads, kindles, booxes, and Apple TV. I am loaded to the hilt with powerful foreign language learning hardware. This should be like a renaissance for me, coming back to a language I once had reading competency in, 18 years later with more edtech hardware and ereading technology. Let’s this time, out of lack of necessity, pump a little money into my project (though still not a ton!)
The first thing I bought was a VPN. PIA specifically, on Black Friday, three years of a VPN for $2 a month. This will allow me to connect to a Swedish IP on my ipad and Apple TV, which should give me free reign to SVT (Sverige Television) without geofencing. I should be able to watch the same state TV as Swedes (for free). Ihave never had a VPN before, so this will be an exciting feature. I watched SVT a ton in 2009, but the only international show was the daily news. I would obviously like to watch other types of media. I might start with children’s shows until my vocabulary increases, because kids shows are kind of annoying to watch as an adult, but eventually I would like to spend my evenings watching SVT after work.
The second purchase was Anki for iOS. This was a pretty big purchase, as iOS Anki costs $25, but desktop Anki is open source and iOS purchases support overall Anki development. So I consider it a contribution and investment in humanity. And Anki on the iPad is a great user experience, it is a fantastic app. I don’t always like Anki on the laptop, but iOS Anki is fun because you can walk around the house or on a treadmill while studying. So here I am with a clean copy of iOS Anki and half a dozen Swedish decks. I will use my iPad for dedicated Swedish study. I hardly use my iPad at all these days, now that I have e-ink ereaders, so when I use my iPad I will probably be studying Swedish. I have heard there is a lack of scientific proof behind Anki’s spaced repetition (I think Cal Newport said so much), and that you really can’t learn a language through Anki alone, but I have always (since high school) reached my studying goals through flash cards, so I would not want to skip on flash cards. Anki is a clean experience with a fantastic database of free decks, so I am happy to have made this investment.
Next up is books. If I could, I would read Swedish children’s books full time, working my way up to young adult books, then to adult books and then finally to academic texts. This is a multiyear if not multidecade process, so I need to see if there is are any book subscription services for all age groups of ebooks. The main problem with that is I have never had a VPN before. So Storytel was completely in English and didn’t offer Swedish books in my geofence. I just signed up for Storytel on my Swedish VPN IP and now I’m seeing Swedish books! I can turn on “kids mode” and see children’s-difficulty books from age 0 to 12. Hopefully that represents a decade worth of learning, right there. There are even audio and ebooks you can read simultaneously. Unfortunately Storytel is expensive – $18 a month for 100 hours credit and $28 a month for unlimited hours. I think I would probably get a better deal out of finding my own Swedish children’s books on Project Gutenberg or Project Runeberg. Right now I have signed up for a three month trial of Storytel, at the 100 hours/month level. I’m not even sure I have 100 hours of free time outside of work each month, so this is a sufficient tier. I will work my way up from ages 0-3, to 3-6, to 6-9, to 9-12, up to YA, up to adult. I just signed up for their 3 month/30 hour trial, so this is a completely new product I’ve never used before, but now can read read-aloud ebooks with accompanying audiobook tracks. This is how I learned to read English at my public library as a kid – read along books with accompanying audiotapes. I’ll just have to work my way up the ranks for a new language. This is obviously another huge investment – $18 a month is expensive! But I’m working and there’s no equivalent of this learning opportunity (with ebook + audiobook simultaneously), so I am excited to spend a little hard earned dough to try a new approach to learning a language. Plus I have basically infinite books at any difficulty level! If I create an endowment using the 4% rule ($18/month * 12 mos * 25 = $5400), I could have Swedish read aloud books for the rest of my life! This is how I would most like to experience my Swedish language skills — reading along with Swedish books to their audio track. So what an exciting service to purchase! All the way across the pond. Something that didn’t exist 18 years ago, to be sure! It’s expensive, no doubt, but without access to a Swedish public library I’ll just never have access to free Swedish books, unless they’re in the public domain! As I learn over the next few years shat services work, and which aren’t worth the money, I’ll streamline my subscriptions.
It’s worth noting that accessibility has improved so much over the past few decades that Apple TV natively supports Swedish closed captions, so as I watch SVT on my VPN I will be able to read along with the television programs with pretranscribed closed captions. It too will be like reading an ebook with an audio track. It used to be very difficult to find Swedish television programs with instantaneous closed captions, so 18 years later it’s a much better world for a beginning Swedish learner!
Note: After using Storytel for a couple of hours, it looks like 0-3 år is actually grade K-3, not age 0-3 years. These books are pretty complicated for a three year old! But it’s actually for third graders, and I am doing fine. I was hoping for stupidly simple books, to build my vocabulary from, but this’ll do fine too. I was able to install Google translate on my iPad, which means I can translate whole sentences from the book. And I installed the Swedish-English dictionary on my iPad dictionaries, which means I can translate single words. So I can build vocabulary flashcards for Anki without even leaving the Storytel app. Win for iPad! Fantastic edtech! Ebooks, if you don’t love them already, get on board!
Finally, I installed a Swedish TTS voice under Apple a11y features (Siri Voice 2). I will be able to read texts aloud on Project Runeberg by using “Listen to Page” under the Safari Reader Mode menu. Another way to get read aloud Swedish texts, this time for free! I will see if long term this isn’t a worthy replacement to Storytel, especially since Storytel is so expensive. The hard part about Project Runeberg is there is no “children’s” category, all the books are mixed together, so you have to do a lot of work to discover which books have easier vocabulary. Jack London is a well translated, reoccurring favorite. I will need to find some other easy books that can be read through the browser with “Listen to Page.”
I would like to find some bilingual translations, such as split column Swedish-English books, but those are rare because they’re so labor-intensive. We’ll see what else I discover the next few years.
I have so many hobbies! I still want to get back into music and filmmaking. It’s a joyous world to have so many hobbies — reading, writing, art, music, learning languages. And make no mincemeat that the current political climate is expediting the need for a “safety” country, far away from America but where I still can read the language. Who knows what will happen with the collapse of the American empire. I know I am firmly on team social democracy, and that’s why I’m learning Nordic languages. Finnish is next!
It’s not a bad idea to throw some money at language learning. Spending zero dollars only get you so far. Getting a nice ebook subscription is probably worth the cost of admission. I am so happy to be getting back into Swedish, and participating in an actually civilized culture. I’d much rather be learning Swedish than reading the current American news. I will probably try and move to Sweden once my parents die. I am promising to stay in Topeka until their passage through life is complete, so that I can help them age. I have so much privilege, I am less scared to be in America during a fascist regime, than my sister, for example, who moved to France.
Take care, all! Find an ebook subscription service in the language you prefer! And get to reading kids books! The day and age of droughts to find children’s ebooks where you can translate in-app using Apple features are over!
Leave a Reply