Tuesday 24 April 2012

It Came To Me...


So today started out like any other day, i got up with Marie said goodbye to her as she left for work, got the kids up and ready for school and headed out the door. Now for the last i don't know how long now, perhaps 6 months or so i have been listening to a Swedish Radio channel called P3, to be honest the only reason i am actually listening to it is because we live out in the middle of nowhere and apparently the radio reception for all other channels is shockingly bad to the point you can't hear them. 
But the great thing about listening to this channel is the fact that 99.9% of the time they are speaking and not just playing music track after music track, so it is pretty great practice listening to them speak Swedish all the time.
Not to mention they can actually be quite amusing to listen to, i mean the guy that hosts the show with the other 2 women is just absolutely hysterical when he gets going, although i still have no idea why he speaks half Swedish and then throws in some English but it makes it even more enjoyable to listen to.

But for some reason this morning, as i walked back from dropping the twins off at school and saying my goodbyes i ended up stopping half way down the road, it wasn't that i had forgotten anything it was the fact i realised.....

I am walking down this path on the way to back home, with my earphones in my ears and for the first time ever i'm not translating what they are saying into English, i am walking and listening to these people speak Swedish and i'm understanding every single word that comes out of their mouth without even thinking about the English translation.

Now alot of people will be saying, well it's about time you have been living in the country for nearly 6 years now if you are not already understanding what people say then there is something seriously wrong, and perhaps you should consider going back to the UK. But the thing is i have always understood what people were saying, well since i began learning the language, but i have always had to translate it into English in my head quick. 
Sure as time went on there was stuff i would say without even thinking about it, like Hej då (Goodbye) was just stuff that after a certain amount of time just came naturally but when people spoke, i would always stand there and quickly try and translate what they said to English and then give my response after i had tried to translate what i would say into Swedish. So when i realised i was quite taken a back by it, in the way of what the hell i'm not translating for a change.

So it's quite a breakthrough i must admit and it has kind of shown that if i just relax and forget about the stupid stuff i can actually just enjoy the language.

But anyways that was my breakthrough for today, so until next time have a great day!

2 comments:

Ina Ladria Westheim said...

Thats awesome, Ben! :D (Im sitting here smiling on your behalf atm.)

Sephira said...

Go you Uncle ben :D