Swedish thoughts
At the moment I’m in Gothenburg (Göteborg) in Sweden for a conference (an international one, so the language of the conference is English). But I needed to escape the vast numbers of people after the opening event tonight and found a quiet Italian restaurant near the hotel. Most of the people there, sitting outside on the terrace where I was too, as it’s a beautiful evening, were Swedish. I should emphasise that this is a language of which I know not one word (correction, I do now know one word - “Tak” which means “Thank you”, I think 
Anyhow, I was sitting surrounded by these Swedish people and the sorts of sounds their conversation was making were exactly like the way I (sort of) hear English. The way intonation rises and falls in sentences - that sort of thing - seems very similar to English, except that when I tried to lipread them nothing made any sense at all apart from some slightly confusing words which might have actually been English since everyone seems to speak it more or less perfectly here.
So, all this Swedish-sounding-like-it-might-be-English has got me wondering whether other Scandanavian languages sound (and even look on lips) quite similar to English. I have no idea, but this evening’s experience was kinda interesting. It could so nearly have been English until I tried to work out whether it meant anything.
Not a very profound observation, but it’s kinda cool to be posting from a hotel in Sweden
June 18th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
LOL *hotel room in sweeden!! go out and about and see the city!
I went to prague last year, and found this too, but I didnt find Chezk anything likt English to lipread, infact i could hardly lipread their english, they speak English very ‘rough’ if I may say, loud and harsh toned, almost like Russian, the funny thing is, when im lipreading here, I can nearly always tell if some one has an accent before I actually talk to them, but to actually read certain languages and certain people that dont have english as a first lingo, I find tough
June 18th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Exactly. I’m good at lipreading only the Filipino language. Although
I can read, write, speak, and yes, think in English I can’t lipread
English spoken by others who are not Filipinos. The Filipino language
has similarities with Malay and Hindu languages.
How’s the weather up there in Sweden, prof?
June 18th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
This is a random question, yes: what time is the sun setting in Sweden these days?
Holy cow. I just looked it up. The sun RISES at 3:30 in the morning, and doesn’t set until 10-ish? Holy cow.
June 19th, 2006 at 2:07 am
Oooh, I didn’t know Philipino was similar to Malay. I’ve never actually heard it spoken though, so maybe thats why it never fell into place.
I like Malay, a friend of mine taught me how to say some stuff in it, but I have no idea what they are anymore… stupid memory.
Weird about Swedish having the same tones as English… (tht was my feeble attempt at making an on-topic point… how’d i do?)
Re the sun thing: I was in Seattle, WA for a week or so in July a few years ago. Sun came up at 5 or 6am (i don’t know for sure, i wasn’t up yet) and we watched it set at 10:30 or 11 every night on the bay. It was amazing… and gorgeus. I got a sunburn… (yeah, I’m pasty) LOL
June 19th, 2006 at 2:39 am
Katie - I wondered why the hotel room had such thick curtains until I realised that it only gets dark around midnight and light again (probably) a couple of hours later
So yes, it’s light for nearly the whole time. Fortunately the sun is shining too - weather is really lovely. And I’m *supposed* to be going to at this conference…I’d better head on over there and see what’s going on. With any luck I can arrange to arrive just in time for…the coffee break 
Plus I need to think about what I am going to say myself, but my paper isn’t until Thursday, so plenty of time for that. It’s nice here.
June 19th, 2006 at 10:49 am
More observations on this today. I still haven’t quite worked this out, but I think it’s something to do with the intonation of spoken Swedish: the patterns and “sounds” of speech seem very similar to English, but then the words make no sense when you try to lipread them. It’s quite weird really
But whereas German or Italian or French have completely different patterns, they *never* “sound” (or look) like English. Swedish is strange because I’m hearing these sounds that really could be English and then noticing that they aren’t when I try to work them out. Anyhow, it’s a very friendly place, and I’m typing this from a room which is overlooking a sunny garden. There’s some truly awful-sounding civic reception for the conference this evening so I shall go and find some place quiet to have a drink and a meal instead 
June 19th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Ja..:)
June 19th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
hohprof: Interesting what you say about Swedish. I know a deaf signing friend of mine was learning Swedish for a while. I believe Swedish has a similar word order to BSL as well… Try not to parse them too much, you’ll break your poor brain!
Athina: I’ve just had a quick read about Filipino language on wikipedia - a really interesting article about how official descriptions and actual use vary and how words from other languages and evolution of native languages works.
I know I find lipreading people who are from various parts of Africa and Asia very difficult. English is a language they often use day-to-day if not parallel to other languages of the come or community. However the way they use English and the (to me) distorted pronunciation is very hard to follow. I can only imagine you have the same difficulty as you have become accustomed to the style in which English is spoken in your locality.
hohprof (again): Sounds like you are having a fantastic time and doing an excellent job of skiving the pointless pomp and pretention which would just be a waste of auditory processing energy! Keep us posted as to how your trip goes..
Oh and I dare you - if you find induction loops to see if they work (I won’t make you complain if they don’t!)!
June 19th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Natalya, we pride ourselves for being the only English speaking nation
in Southeast Asia. We feel superior to Japan,Korea and the other
ASEAN nations just because we can speak English better than them.
(brag, brag):)We are of a Malay race (light brown not black)but we
were colonized by the Spaniards for many years then sold to the
Americans later! (funny history):)Our language has a sprinkling of
Spanish and English words.Yes, we pronounce English in a peculiar
way and we’re exasperated the way British and the Americans pronounce
their English! Lol. We admire the way the Irish pronounce their English,
though. We have a veteran English language newcaster here who was
trained by Irish nuns. We find her really cool.
I think the Filipino language is easier to lipread because it uses
a lot of vowels. For example, the Filipino words for ‘How are you?’
is ‘Kumusta ka?’which was taken from the Spanish words ‘Como esta tu?’
June 20th, 2006 at 2:08 am
Athina: *grins* Sounds good to me. The other Asean nations are catching up with you just watch out! It’ll be interesting to see what happens to local as well as national languages over the coming years.
Japanese and indeed Chinese are increasingly popular languages to learn in the UK. A friend of mine Ben studied Japanese, has been working for a few years as a translator and teacher there. He is coming home for a year to start a two-part Chinese Masters degree at Cambridge University. I think he plans to move to China for a while where with his English and Japanese he will be highly employable and less restricted than he is currently by the ridgid Japanese employment and social hierarchies.