A few interesting facts and stories

Last night for our Swedish class we had a three part lecture on different aspects of Swedish culture. One of them focused on linguistics and how Swedish is much more difficult than other languages because of the many vowel sounds... and consonant sounds.... and pronunciation. The chart above is a slide that show on top the relationship of all the vowels in English. Below them is the relationship of Swedish vowels- notice how they are all clustered? That would be one of the main reasons that Swedish is so difficult. Also, some of the sounds require you're mouth to make both a vowel and consonant shape simultaneously- easy right?


We also heard about Swedish music, which started out as dance music to try and cheer people up- although it was mainly written in minor keys with lyrics about death... so not sure how uplifting that would be. By 1997 Sweden was the 3rd biggest exporter of pop music in the world, which I didn't know. I also found out that the woman on the 50 kronor bill is Jenny Lind who was a Swedish opera star in the 1800's. She was world famous and toured Europe and the United States.

The other lecture was on Swedish literature, starting with the runes carved into rocks. Swedish literature now is most famous for crime novels. Authors such as Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell are just two of many autors who have written books that have been published all over the world. Selma Lagerlöf was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature for her book "Adventures of Nils". The story is about a young boy who gets transformed into a tiny boy and taken on an adventure around Sweden, learning about geography and culture. Selma Lagerlöf is pictured on the 20 kronor bill and on the back you can see Nils riding on a goose over Sweden.

A few random stories and things from the past week:

Last night on my way to lecture, I stepped aside to let a cyclist pass, and when I stepped back on the sidewalk my feet flew out from under me and I went falling for the pavement. Luckily, instead of my face hitting the pavement, I caught myself with my elbow and hand. Painful, but it was the first time I've slipped on the ice here-which I think is a big accomplishment, I made it over a week without falling! When I told this to a friend of mine from Australia, he said "oh so you totally stacked it?". This is apparently another slang term for falling...

One thing about the classes here that amuses me is the custom in Lund called the "academic quarter". This means that all classes start 15 minutes after they are scheduled to begin. The custom started because when the university was first founded, no one had clocks so they would hear the church bells toll on the hour and then start going to class- so the class wouldn't actually be able to start until about quarter after the hour.

One of my mentors informed me last night that if you want to get KFC, you have to go to Copenhagen. She also said that the McDonalds here is much more healthy than in the states and tastes different. Just in case you were wondering....