a blog by Peter Leonard
Hard to believe twenty-three students actually signed up for Elementary Swedish, but that's what the registration system tells me:
There's another section of the same class an hour earlier taught by a colleague -- we usually get 40-50 students between the two.
Although we don't hew precisely to it at all times, the textbook for the first year is Nya mål. Here's the first page:
The marks underneath the letters aren't part of the standard writing system; they're used in the first few chapters to help students grasp the difference between long and short vowels. Although less exciting than more exotic sounds such as the voiceless palatal-velar fricative ɧ, this 'base prosody' is actually far more important in making yourself understood than mastering the varous "sje" sounds.
For some strange reason the University has blueprints online of all of its recently-remodeled classrooms; thusly, below is a birds-eye schematic of exactly how the room looks:
I have no idea how the strange split in the chairs will work out in real life -- girls against boys? Younger students vs. upperclassmen? Sj-ljud versus sh-ljud?