Near the start of this year at the Eric Sahlström Institute, I discussed what it is like to study in another language. (My native language is English and I am studying music entirely in Swedish.) This is an update on how it has been.

I had hoped and expected to be much better at understanding and speaking Swedish by this time at the end of the course. I understand a lot of written and spoken Swedish at this point, but there is nearly always something I don’t understand. I still have difficulty with regional accents, especially Skåne, and muffled speech. Also, I remain uncomfortable and slow at speaking. I dream often in Swedish, so I think my unconscious mind knows much more Swedish than my conscious mind can use.

My learning curve was strong at the beginning, but somewhere along the way I stalled out. It was around February-March, maybe when my boyfriend and I broke up, or when I got overtired. Perhaps I am being too hard on myself about this, but I had higher expectations and it has been a source of frustration to continue to struggle so much.

When I visited Paris I noted that I remain more fluent in French than in Swedish, despite not having used French in years. I learned French when I was in high school and read many books in French and spoke with some fluency (including during a several month trip to Switzerland) during that time. When I struggle for words, French still sometimes comes up rather than Swedish (although sometimes it goes the other way and Swedish pops out when I want French). It could be age-related; I was young when I learned French, now not so young.

Another possible reason why I didn’t get better than this is that I didn’t make enough of an effort to speak. I have recently learned that struggling is important and practicing retrieval of new knowledge is really key to learning. But I stayed away from blurting out bad attempts at speaking Swedish, keeping quiet when I should have been practicing speech. We had a very international group this year. Out of 14 of us living in the annex full time, 8 are not native Swedish speakers, so English was spoken most of the time (4 of the 8 are native English speakers).

I think many of the things I learned here this year will be further consolidated and processed after I go home. That will certainly be true of all the tunes and techniques I have learned on nyckelharpa, and with music theory and arrangement, and likely also true of Swedish language. I will continue to study it, including finishing reading Pippi Långstrump (Longstocking) that I began here. And I’ll be back in Sweden in July, with more opportunities to listen and speak!