Swedish Puberty

“Being an immigrant, you’re like a baby. Everything around you is new and there is plenty that you don’t understand.” This quote I read recently on the blog of a student who, like me, exchanged Holland for Sweden. Remembering my first days in Lund, when I walked dizzily and overwhelmed through the city center and bought a bad bike for too much money – stupid Swedish crowns – I can identify with this quote.

The good news is: growing up goes a lot faster when one does it a second time. My first words I already uttered after two days and I think that I’m doing quite fine one year later, with a Swedish address, personal number and a Swedish bank account. I know where to do cheap groceries and put off my shoes whenever I enter a house: Sweden has raised me well. Except for the language. For, as far as concerns my Swedish, I am still stuck in puberty.

This can be seen clearly in my daily Swedish advanced-speakers class, where our teacher tries with remarkable patience to lift our Swedish level to academic heights. And whereas I and my twenty class mates can easily order a coffee or listen to the weather forecast, our legs, still in a puberty, are not always able to make the leap to real Swedish.

Recently, we discussed the difference between democracies and dictatorships and why one should like the former more than the latter. With our proficiency, this results in quotes like: “In a dictatorship you are not free, while you are so indeed in democracies. And: in a democracy leaders are chosen in a nice way. Not in dictatorships. That is really really bad.” I couldn’t help being reminded of a debate tournament in seventh grade.

Last week, we had to give a presentation on a ‘mythical’ person and again we clearly didn’t exceed high school level. We treated the topic as in-depth as a paddling pool, our mediocre PowerPoint presentation contained several spelling errors and we had collected all our information at Wikipedia.

For next week’s assignment, we will have to do a mini-investigation on the topic of ‘language’ – but a sample group of five to ten participations will do for measuring the results. “Does everyone know what a questionnaire is?”, the teacher asks. Not without reason – some class mates are not yet familiar with the word ‘enkät’.

Thankfully, the course runs for another two months and we have some time left to grow up. I hope to reach adulthood before my final exam...

(Dutch version was published here: http://www.dub.uu.nl/artikel/blog/zweedse-puberteit.html)