Then the world left! Help!
Nov. 26th, 2010 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marshtide1. It is -7 degrees outside, and it is laundry day, and I have no proper clothes left. I have just stolen a small pile of Val's, as I refuse to leave the house with less than five tops on right now. -7 will seem a lot less terrifying later in winter, but it's November, damn it. We also seem to have completely lost the path outside our flat in the night. The more it snows (tiddly-pom), etc. In short: winter is here and it is not fucking around.
2. P3 kultur, aka Nördorama, is a pretty fantastic radio program. I've been downloading old episodes through itunes to listen to while I walk to school, and hearing conversations on such fascinating and varied topics as spiderman's girlfriends and the alarming mortality rate of female characters in comics, fascism-fetishism in electronica, gay cowboys, and "muminmugg vänstern" (the mumin-mug left)! Basically it's a culture programme which takes an extremely broad view of what constitutes culture and discusses all of it with a blend of the sort of serious analysis usually reserved for Proper Art and nerd humour. You guys, it is like it was made for me.
3. Got my hands on the first volume of Andromeda stories. O, I want more!
4. Current reading:
Simone och jag by Åsa Moberg
Flickan och skulden by Katarina Wennstam (but slowly, because it is a book about rape culture, basically, and oh god, how depressing. it's not things that I didn't know but it's laid out very clearly and gives an incredibly sharp picture of how fucked up the whole thing is. This book is focused on the victims of rape; she's written another book focused on rapists. Which I'm sure will be even more depressing, but I'll probably learn more from it, so I think I should read it.)
Pappan och havet by Tove Jansson
...so you guys, I think I maybe need something to read in Swedish which is not quite so depressing.
5. I've been getting good feedback on my writing in Swedish from school lately. I still have a relatively limited pool of the language to play in, but here are my primary mistakes:
a) I sometimes mix up infinitive and present tense when writing, because it's often a difference of one letter. But I don't do it consistently and I do know which is which; if I'm not concentrating it just sort of wanders around in a random way.
b) I sometimes muck up word order slightly in sub-clauses, i.e. "inte" ends up in a strange place or something.
Which is, you know... not so catastrophic!
The other thing about Swedish is that it seems to have freed up something in my brain that was stuck fast, and suddenly if I have a writing task I can just do it. And it'll be in quite simple language but it'll read fairly naturally and my thoughs will be there on paper. I've lost that ability in English because I overthink it.
We'll see what happens when I get better at writing in Swedish, but I think it will always be a kind of different experience to writing in English (and possibly more enjoyable).
6. A week ago I gave a short talk about my experience of swedish lit in school. Now everyone wants book recs. Evil laughter goes here?
Next week I'm giving a talk about Greta Garbo, apparently, as we all got given someone famous from Sweden to talk about over the next month. Greta Garbo I can totally live with! ♥ (and on the same day someone else is talking about Queen Christina, so that should be a delightfully queer afternoon.)
2. P3 kultur, aka Nördorama, is a pretty fantastic radio program. I've been downloading old episodes through itunes to listen to while I walk to school, and hearing conversations on such fascinating and varied topics as spiderman's girlfriends and the alarming mortality rate of female characters in comics, fascism-fetishism in electronica, gay cowboys, and "muminmugg vänstern" (the mumin-mug left)! Basically it's a culture programme which takes an extremely broad view of what constitutes culture and discusses all of it with a blend of the sort of serious analysis usually reserved for Proper Art and nerd humour. You guys, it is like it was made for me.
3. Got my hands on the first volume of Andromeda stories. O, I want more!
4. Current reading:
Simone och jag by Åsa Moberg
Flickan och skulden by Katarina Wennstam (but slowly, because it is a book about rape culture, basically, and oh god, how depressing. it's not things that I didn't know but it's laid out very clearly and gives an incredibly sharp picture of how fucked up the whole thing is. This book is focused on the victims of rape; she's written another book focused on rapists. Which I'm sure will be even more depressing, but I'll probably learn more from it, so I think I should read it.)
Pappan och havet by Tove Jansson
...so you guys, I think I maybe need something to read in Swedish which is not quite so depressing.
5. I've been getting good feedback on my writing in Swedish from school lately. I still have a relatively limited pool of the language to play in, but here are my primary mistakes:
a) I sometimes mix up infinitive and present tense when writing, because it's often a difference of one letter. But I don't do it consistently and I do know which is which; if I'm not concentrating it just sort of wanders around in a random way.
b) I sometimes muck up word order slightly in sub-clauses, i.e. "inte" ends up in a strange place or something.
Which is, you know... not so catastrophic!
The other thing about Swedish is that it seems to have freed up something in my brain that was stuck fast, and suddenly if I have a writing task I can just do it. And it'll be in quite simple language but it'll read fairly naturally and my thoughs will be there on paper. I've lost that ability in English because I overthink it.
We'll see what happens when I get better at writing in Swedish, but I think it will always be a kind of different experience to writing in English (and possibly more enjoyable).
6. A week ago I gave a short talk about my experience of swedish lit in school. Now everyone wants book recs. Evil laughter goes here?
Next week I'm giving a talk about Greta Garbo, apparently, as we all got given someone famous from Sweden to talk about over the next month. Greta Garbo I can totally live with! ♥ (and on the same day someone else is talking about Queen Christina, so that should be a delightfully queer afternoon.)
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Date: 2010-11-26 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 03:54 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2010-11-27 09:22 pm (UTC)So awesome that you're getting good feedback for your Swedish! I agree that writing in another language is a very different experience from writing in your own; English just flows differently than Finnish for me.
I also remember having same primary issues with Swedish back in school, though they weren't my only primary issues. I also kept mixing Swedish with German a lot, which both didn't help my learning of Swedish and made my German, which I had studied longer, worse. It's a pity since I'd love to have a good handle on both languages, but I don't seem to be capable of it.
Greta Garbo and Queen Christina talked about on the same day! I wish I was in your class. ♥