A common question that I get is how fast can you learn Swedish or if you can learn Swedish in X amount of months. What people don’t seem to know is that this is highly individual and depends on a few things: motivation, time, and experience. However, there are things you can do that will definitely speed up your process if you are patient. So here are 5 tips for learning Swedish fast that will definitely help you to actually learn Swedish faster.
1. Watch Swedish TV and movies
Immersion is important when learning a language since something so basic like tuning your ears to a foreign language will do wonders for you if you want to learn it fast. In this modern era local TV is no longer limited to its target audience. Even if you aren’t living in Sweden there are several ways to watch Swedish TV for free. Streaming has made it possible and Swedish TV channels provide us with lots of free content that is not geoblocked, meaning it’s not restricted to those living in Sweden. Try these 5 Swedish TV shows to stream for free and start your immersion right now.
You could also browse yourself among the vast catalog of these Swedish TV channels:
2. Listen to Swedish radio
Speaking of tuning your ears to a language, why not just turn on a radio station and let it play. You don’t need to understand the language to benefit from immersion. Radio stations are usually not geoblocked which means you can choose whatever station you want. For it to have any effect, try to find a channel that has a decent amount of talking but which also plays music so that you don’t get bored.
There are a number of apps to choose from when you want to listen to radio stations from abroad, but you can also tune into the actual radio stations online and see if they have a stream (which they most likely have).
3. Listen (and sing along) to Swedish music
The immersion continues and this time we want to tickle our ears with music in Swedish. There are some awesome artists from Sweden that you have never heard of because their main language of choice is Swedish.
Fire up our offical playlist Best Swedish Music In Swedish, find your favorites and sing your heart out because this step will not only tune your ears to Swedish but also tune your vocal chords. Everyone gets happy from singing their favorite songs, why not try to find one that is written in Swedish? Listen to the song, study the lyrics and try to sing along. This is how I got fluent in German. I basically learned Blümchen’s whole back catalog by heart and did not only learn words but even grammar. It also made me get used to speaking German.
4. Read children’s books
Children don’t magically just speak their native tongue, they aquire this skill over time, just like you, by immersing themselves. Now, you do have the advantage of already speaking a language and the skill of speaking, reading and writing which means that you will be able to learn faster than a child. So why not starting reading a children’s book? Start where children start and then work your way to the top. This will help you getting used to reading the language in reasonable chunks which won’t overwhelm you. The texts will be enough for you to translate and actually learn something without making you frustrated because you don’t know any of the words and translating takes too long.
5. Get some Swedish friends
I know how it sounds. It’s not easy to befriend Swedes and even harder if you don’t actually live in Sweden but hear me out: join a community of some sort online and try your wings with some actual Swedes.
The easiest thing you could do is to join the Say it in Swedish Discord community. You can chat with me and other Swedes over there and start improving your Swedish immediately.