Akta/äkta Svenska...

The posts have been few and far between, I know. I've been busy over the last couple of months. I'm now working on the final assignment for my Scandinavian Studies course at university, which turned out to be not all that interesting, for all that I did learn about some Swedish history and culture. I've been having a lot more fun with my SFI Swedish language classes, which I attend 4 days a week. My Swedish is progressing quite well - I know my vänlig (friendly) from my vanlig (ordinary), and my äkta (real) from my akta (watch out!). The importance of such differences become clear when one reads a headline such as "Kackerlackor har blivit vanlig-are i Sverige" (Cockroaches have become more ordinary in Sweden) or when travelling around town one sees many korv (sausage) kiosks with signs stating "äkta mos!" (real mashed potatoes!). I've been using Swedish more and more in conversations with friends and people in shops. My pronounciation is relatively good, and my appearance doesn't mark me out in any way, so often I am accepted by strangers as the real deal.

However, having strangers assume that you're Swedish does have its downsides. I've run in to trouble often because I know how to ask for directions, but not what people are saying when they give them. It's too complicated to say, oh even though I asked in Swedish, can you repeat in English, please? Usually I just nod and pay very close attention to where they're pointing.

These kind of challenges have become especially manifest now that I've started a språkpraktik (language apprenticeship) at a hardware store. They subscribe to the IKEA model - epic-sized store stocking everything from kitchen utensils to motor oil, with a hot-dog stand and 5kr ($1)-per-use public toilet. The idea is, I work there for free 12 hours a week, and thereby get to practice using Swedish in a working environment. It sucks working for free, especially in a place to which I am so clearly unsuited, but I'm actually really lucky to have got the opportunity. The Swedish job market is so crappy at the moment that nobody's keen to take on even free labour! I don't understand it, but there you go. So far I've been stacking shelves, or in one memorable case, un-stacking them. I put about 800 individual lightbulbs into boxes that day, and that was just a small dent in the sea of light-bulbs that needed to be re-packed. I don't know what place the lightbulbs were going on to, but I hope it was a happier, less dusty one. This kind of work isn't inherently difficult, except for the 20 long minutes I spent with one tiny shelf area filled with plastic flasks that were almost exactly the shape of upside-down bowling pins... If the one you're moving so much as brushes another, they're all down. I wish I was as good at knocking real bowling pins over.

What really makes the work challenging is the incessant stream of customers that want you to help them. You've just bent over to deal to the stupid inverse bowling pin flasks, hoping that the painful posture will hide you, when you hear an ever so polite (Swedes are always polite) "Ursäkta, kan jag fråga dig?" (Excuse me, can I ask you something?). The customers have variations on two questions, 1) Where can I find x?; 2) How do I use y? I can almost never answer either. For Q1), I most often don't understand what they're looking for, having not yet memorised hard-ware related vocabulary, or if I do understand I'm not sure where we keep it in the Nevada Desert sized store. For Q2), I don't think I could answer even in English, as I don't know anything about boat-chrome or what kind of primer to use on your tractor. So I spend most of my time on the job in an endless cycle of explaining to customers that I can't help them, and running desperately through the maze of aisles trying to find the one or two personnel that are actually employed to talk to the hundreds of customers that pour through every day. And because my Swedish sounds right and I don't look like an immigrant (read: I don't look like I come from outside Western Europe), the customers just think I'm a magnificently unhelpful idiot.

Oh well, at least I'm getting a lot of practice at saying - "sorry I can't help you, talk to him instead" in Swedish. I try to vary the mantra, which means I occasionally end up referring to the bicycle expert as a small boy instead of a young man, which raises eyebrows.