I moved to Sweden recently and am discovering just how embarrassing this is for me. People will be chattering in Swedish and I don’t know if there’s a good time for me to jump in if I have to ask someone about something and I feel like an asshole just wandering in possibly mid sentence. Or someone sees me trying to pay attention and they all switch to English. I’m trying to learn Swedish but I’ve only ever known English and it’s difficult getting my brain to hold on to all the new words
Hi! I moved to Denmark in 2024, and have some similar experience with this as Danes are quick to switch to English too. I’m hard at work language learning as I’m sure you are. Scandinavians have great English and also like to have even social ground rather than the high ground of being better in their language. Good recipe for them switching to English.
I guess what little advice I have is try all the time in Swedish, tell friends and coworkers and such that you wanna practice. be comfy failing :) good luck!
Finn here: just because Danes switch to English, doesn’t mean they’re easier to understand /j
I’m swedish and the danes switch to English with me too 😖
Or commonly “we’re speaking English because it’s the only language we have in common”
I speak english, because it’s the only other language we both know.
Lowest common denominator.
I mean, let’s level our euro pride here – we were pretty much forced to learn it with the gun of dropping out of school pressed against our heads.
One might say that pressing the gun against of students is mainly an U.S. thing with all those school massacres though…
