Porn in Swedish

A friend of mine told me that he is writing a book. He's Swedish, and whenever i have some alcohol, my foreign languages come out. That's why I tried to say "Good luck! (in Swedish of course).

He gave me a blank look. "Excuse me?"

I tried again. ("Lyck a teel!")

Oh! He repeated what I tried to say, with (what sounded to me) a microscopically different accent on the last vowel sound.

He smiled as I repeated it (or tried to repeat it) in Swedish.

"What you said sounded like (Swedish Word)... it kinda means "small novel"... It was actually the name of a soft porn magazine in the 60's..."

Quite a funny mistake! I can't tell you why "small-novel/pornographic-magazine" and "good luck" sound so similar in Swedish, or any other funny stories about the titillating confusion it causes all over the Swedish speaking world, but I've only recently started my Swedish learning properly, so I will let you know when I find out. I actually signed up for Swedish lessons at lingq.com recently... I haven't even had a look yet though!

Stumbling through Swedish reminds me of how I was (how we all are!) when we start a new language. Whenever someone says something, we listen up, getting things wrong, and generally annoying people who speak fluently.

I've had some interesting experiences with Korean recently. I have come to realise that I've passed the stage that i describe above (people don't stare at me blankly when I say stuff any more). I met a Korean guy on Christmas actually, and we were chatting away. And my Korean speaking girlfriend left her phone at home yesterday, and I had to explain to a Korean speaking friend that she'd forgotten it. Usually we have to umm and ahh a lot to get our message across, but I got there!

Here's a secret: whenever I have a phone conversation with someone in Korean, after I hang up, I go to the "calls" section of my phone and look up how long the conversation was. My longest entirely Korean phone call has been 3:12!

I realise this post has been a little rambling (if one were one of those modern kids, one might call it "random!") so sorry, I just feel I've been neglecting TalkWithTheWorld for a while.