I have now officially been in Sweden for six months, half a year, and before I came to Sweden I really didn't know any Swedish. I completed the first level of Rosetta Stone however that only taught me things such as the colors, numbers, and basic introductions. And now I feel rather comfortable listening to Swedish and I more or less understand everything that is said and I can express myself rather well in Swedish (I can get across what I want to say however it might not be similar to how I would in English, its more basic). However, I got back a recent Swedish test and I did really well on it but my teacher was so surprised by how good my Swedish was because, our last test was in the fall so she just seemed so shocked at how much I learned in just a few months. And it's a really good feeling, knowing that I came here knowing next to nothing and now I can communicate and understand Swedish better than I can after 5 years of Spanish.
However, before I came to Sweden I thought that it would be much easier to learn the language, I thought it would come more naturally but it doesn't. So, what I did for the first two months was I kept a notebook with me that I would write down Swedish words I saw or heard frequently or if someone told me "oh the Swedish word for that is _____" I could say, "Can you write that down for me?" because if they didn't I would forget the word in the blink of an eye. It was also very helpful because I could look up words in the dictionary when I got home or I could take five minutes to just look over all the words I learned that day. Also, I am a little lucky because well English is my first language and in Sweden they don't dub movies (except for children's movies because the kids can't read the subtitles quick enough) so watching tv shows in English with Swedish subtitles was extremely helpful because I could hear the english word and read the Swedish and sort of start putting words together after seeing them reoccur I would figure out "oh, that word means this"
I would also recommend trying to purchase a book on grammar before you go abroad if the country you are going to does not offer any language classes for you (Sweden does do this but only if you are placed in a larger city) because, native speakers don't usually know why they say things the way they do it just sounds right to them which makes it really hard to learn the grammar and sentence structures if you don't have some kind of resource to learn from.
But, the best feeling is after a few months of really putting in a lot of effort you come to this stage of just absorbing the language without really trying. I'll say something and afterwards think....how did I know that word....or if someone mentions a word to me now I can easily remember it. Plus you start to pick up words from just seeing, for example, a liter of milk with the words "mjölk" printed onto it and so you learn just by seeing everything in another language.
And to be honest for the longest time I was so afraid of speaking Swedish to people or just going out by myself and not being able to communicate with strangers however it's gotten much better and honestly I love the challenge of learning a completely new language - it's fun to me.
And also if you are interested you can click here (http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/the-most-swedeny-things-that-ever-happened-in-sweden) to see a great articles about funny Swedish things but also about how funny the Swedish language is!
Well, I hope that was helpful and informative
Vi ses,
Bryana Shook
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