Μαθαίνω ελληνικά. - I am learning Greek.
I am at the point of being able to read Greek, introduce myself, ask and respond to “how are you” and how to say “I am still learning Greek can we speak English”. haha
Μαθαίνω ελληνικά. - I am learning Greek.
I am at the point of being able to read Greek, introduce myself, ask and respond to “how are you” and how to say “I am still learning Greek can we speak English”. haha
Learning Swedish now, since I already speak passable Norwegian, it’s not the hardest endeavor.
This might be a weird question, but: Did you have a particular reason to learn Swedish or Norwegian, or is it just for fun?
I’ve been interested in learning Swedish or Danish, but I haven’t been able to find a practical reason to. I hear that almost all of them speak English pretty well, and will prefer speaking English with you if you visit their country. (The curse of being a native English speaker who likes languages.)
I would have had easy access to a native Danish speaker, but sadly, my Mormor (“mother’s mother”) passed away just last night. Her English was perfect as she lived in the US for >70 years, but her beautiful accent is what originally sparked my interest in Scandinavian languages.
So sorry for your loss!
As for my motivation, I did a year of work & travel in Norway after finishing my bachelor’s and picked up enough to be conversational. Actually I tried staying afterwards but could only score student jobs and temporary stuff, so decided to build my CV a bit more before going back.
Life took a few unexpected turns and instead of returning after a couple years, I ended up working all over Africa and then Asia for 15+ years, but I still kept going, thinking I would one day return.
Now that the time might have come in the near future (= next 2-ish years), I was looking more and more into the requirements and figured out that the wealth tax would break me - I’m by no means filthy rich, but they tax you on assets above ~160k USD, and since I don’t qualify for any government pensions due to my erratic work, I’ve set aside a good chunk of investments for my retirement that’d effectively be crippled in its growth potential. The only thing exempt are a primary residence there (considered to 25% of its value) and local government pension accounts.
That pretty much killed Norway for me, so I’m now looking at Sweden instead, where there’s no such thing, and cost of living are also lower. So I decided to switch over to learning Swedish instead, it’s not far off. I was there last year and was able to have a pretty normal conversation with a real estate agent where I spoke Norwegian and he Swedish, and we understood each other just fine.
For visiting only, English is just fine. But if you plan to work and socialise long term, it’s absolutely essential to integrate.