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Learn more Swedish – and more about Swedish! Ask your questions about the language and share studying resources. Open for learners, linguists and anyone who’s interested in the Swedish language.


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Resources for learning Swedish as a Norwegian speaker

I'm not a native speaker but my Norwegian is currently at around B2 (both Nynorsk and Bokmål) and I'd like to learn Swedish. I know that the best way would be just reading and listening to Swedish as well as trying to speak to Swedes, but this way of learning doesn't really suit me. I prefer a systematic approach instead of "winging it", if you know what I mean.

So, could anyone recommend any resources/courses for learning Swedish designed specifically for Norwegian speakers? I know there are tons of material out there for learning Swedish from English, but I believe learning with Norwegian as a base would be much more efficient, as there are many aspects of the language I'm already familiar with.

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Most people who already speak Norwegian also understand Swedish just fine. I doubt you will find any such material as the target audience is extremely small.

I've tried watching TV in Swedish but understand less than half of what's being said, so I guess if you're not a native speaker it's not that easy without additional learning.

u/birgor avatar

I think this is mostly true for native speakers as they have a much bigger passive vocabulary and also know lots of the words specific for the other language by cultural proximity.

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u/mondup avatar

Since you want something more structured you could perhaps get a textbook entirely in Swedish (Rivstart seems to be the standard recommendation around here, but I can't give an opinion on it myself). That way you would be learning in easier Swedish, which should definitely be doable for someone with an okay knowledge of Norwegian. Starting from scratch with A1 material might be way too easy for you though, so try to gauge roughly where you're at before investing in anything.

Listening is always harder than reading and there's a huge difference between a C2+ native Norwegian/Swedish speaker listening to the other language and an L2 speaker at B2 level. Even if you're at 90% comprehension it's easy to lose the thread and feel lost, and you don't have time to think things through or look things up (unless you're constantly pausing video/audio, but that gets tedious fast and isn't an option in real life conversations).

I'd recommend spending some time reading first to get comfortable with the differences in core vocabulary. It's not a huge amount of new vocab you need to learn for the basics, and the other differences between the languages tend to follow fairly regular patterns that you'll learn to recognise and intuit after a while.

I don't know if you're in Norway, but if you are it might be worth visiting the library. It's very likely that they could find material at various difficulties for you to practice with.

Also have a look at the resources for a bunch of free stuff in easier Swedish.

There are a lot of free apps out there you could use to learn it. I don't know Norwegian and still at a basic to intermediate level of Swedish, but my mother has a bunch of Norwegian decoration (she doesn't speak it, but her mother's side of the family came from Norway). Even just at the level of Swedish I know, many of them that have writing I'm able to read quite a bit of.

False friends, and maybe there are pages that show the ~5% of words that differ a bit more than an extra letter or an e instead of an a

u/weight__what avatar

I would just start with video/audio for learners and work my way up if I were you. That's basically the process I'm taking but it should be a lot faster for you.