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Copenhagen failure spurs local work

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Activists formed the word “Shame” with candles in the centre of Stockholm last Friday.

Coming back to Sweden after the climate summit in Copenhagen I see a lot of deep disappointment. Politicians talk about the outcome as a failure and many environmental and climate groups rage over the “Copenhagen accord”, which does not include binding targets and many vague wordings.

More hope than despair

But reading e-mail lists and following discussions on the internet I also find a lot of fighting spirit. Many mean that the local work to tackle climate change will be even more important, as world leaders do not seem able to agree on how to do it. “People have to start and continue conversations with each other at a grass root level, conversations which lead to actual action”, one activist writes.
Later today there will for example be a torchlight procession in Gothenburg, to infuse new hope for the future. And no matter what is decided in the UN plenary halls, much of the actual work will have to be made at the local level. There is no lack of good examples. I will focus more on that in my reporting the coming time.

 

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

December 21, 2009

  • Pol

    This is probably true and maybe there is hope that at the “end” this movements from the top and bottom converge in the future, so the actual solutions agrees when it actually comes. By the way, the end date of the Conference was also marked by lots of snowfall, as not seen for some 15 years where i live (so some people got somewhat suspicious about global warming) and it was conicidentaly also my birthday :) .

  • Sara

    That is a hopeful thought, and you are right that work must be done in all parts and levels of society. Yes, also Sweden has been full of snow, which is nice after a long time without it. Happy belated birthday!

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  • http://twitter.com/ConversaBooks Mikael Vaede

    Depending on the language you would like to learn, check out http://www.busuu.com as well

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    Wow! Thanks so much for sharing. I’ve heard of Live Mocha but haven’t used it before. It sounds a little like the Rosetta Stone computer program, but with more social interaction, which I always think is a huge help when it comes to learning a language and breaking through to actually speaking it. I should give it a try to brush up on my Italian!

    And, as always, thanks so much for reading! Looking forward to updates on your progress! :)

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    Cool resource! Thanks for sharing!

    Best – Kate

  • Joy Schumacher

    Kate, How did you deal with the different dialect that is spoken in Skane?  Do you learn the “proper Swedish” in the immigrant class or are you learning the Skanska dialect and how did that translate with your learning of the language?  I have some basic Swedish from the tutoring and classes I have taken in New York, but I find that I have a hard time understanding what my husband and his family say to me when they speak the dialect of Skane.  I will be moving to Malmo later this year to be with my husband and I am concerned that I will be confused.   Thanks!!!

    Joy

  • Ann-Lisa

    Well here are two other tips: 1.Try to learn a language not translating words. Each language has got its own meanings and many things can’t be translated “correctly”. Try to understand a language as a language. Dont’t think in your mother tongue and try to translate it into the language, you want to learn. 2. Especially if you want to learn Swedish, you’ll have to listen to it ! The written and the spoken Swedish are really different, very different. Listen to anything possible ! I never learned another language before, where there is such a difference like it is in the Swedish language. And never be afraid of talking, never be a chicken – Swedish people help you to pronounce words correctly.

  • the q.b.

    Kate~! Watching TV for me in Japanese never helped me greatly with vocab unless I stopped the show constantly and flipped to and fro with an online dictionary. It did help a little, but more than the vocab, watching TV helped me a lot listening to the pronunciation and intonation of the words/sentences. I don’t know about Swedish, but in Japanese there is a big difference between casual speak and formal speak and TV helped a lot with that! Not that  it’s any substitute for having a real conversation with native speakers, but just a short defense for TV.

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    Thanks for the comment! (And the defense for TV)

    Now that I’ve really gotten a foothold in Swedish, watching TV does help, and after I had moved back from Italy to the US, I found that watching Italian movies really helped maintain my skills and keep them in working order. I just don’t find it as helpful in the beginning stages as other people do. 

    Thanks again! Kate

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    Great tips! Thanks for adding them to the discussion. Your first point is something people struggle with a lot (myself included), wanting a “perfect translation” for a word or phrase that may not exist as such in the next language. Just yesterday I found myself asking my boyfriend for a phrase in Swedish that means “the real deal”… he had a couple of suggestions for equivalents, but nothing that’s really the equivalent. It was a good reminder that I have to continue to work within the language instead of trying to bend it to my own will :)

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    Hi Joy! Thanks for the question. From my experience, it sort of depends on where you’re going. Skånska is sort of this bugaboo dialect for people who don’t live in Skåne, sort of like having a Midwestern or a Southern accent in the United States.

    Once you get more familiar with Swedish and start to get the hang of it, it’s really easy to hear the differences in the dialects, but for the most part it’s not hard to understand people no matter where they’re from. Once you move here, you’ll start picking out the little differences between Malmö and Lund and Helsingborg variations… it’s frustrating at first but fun after a little while!

  • http://twitter.com/desuecia Conjugando con éxito

    For Swedish (and lots of other languages too) there is a free flashcard app for Android/iPhone called Babbel. I think they market themselves heavily but I have gotten far with their free stuff. When I didn’t know which words to study that app gave me good suggestions and it had a good system for repetitions (long time learning). 

    These days I lean heavily on another flashcard app though that is fully customizable with audio, images and a very smart system for learning and repeating, but that one costs money (Flashcards Deluxe). Where Babbel feeds you words (which is good because it has voice), this is one you put words in yourself. Kicked *ss with all the other flashcard apps I tried, I’m learning words faster than I can put them in :S Also, I’m studying Spanish and on SpanishDict they have audio files for every word in the dictionary, so I can put those in the app, it’s a simple matter of copy-paste the sound link :D Btw, I liked this article :) I need to find someone to talk to -__-

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    Thank you for the great suggestions! I’m totally going to look into Flashcards Deluxe… it sounds great. Eventually my pile of flashcards got so big that I got tired of carrying them, so it would be nice to have something on my computer so that when I need a procrastination break, I can do flashcards for a little while instead of Facebook. 

    Thanks for the tips, and thanks for reading! :)
    Kate

  • Swedishobserver

    Thanks for these tips. I agree with most of what you say except reading newspapers. I think Sweden is the only country in Europe (and among the few in the western world) that has no serious newspapers. All of them look like tabloids. Indeed, open them and you find advertisement after advertisement. There is no newspaper in Sweden which is like, say, the Guardian (UK), Le Monde (France), Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany), Kathimerini (Greece), El Pais (Spain), New York Times (US), and so on. All of them, no exception, have the size, the format, the look, and the layout of a tabloid. I don’t speak Swedish well at all to be able to judge the content, but even if I spoke Swedish, I would be appaled by trying to read an article interspersed by page-full advertisments of anything from tomatoes to bicycles. Very strange indeed, for a European country…

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    I agree with you to a certain extent–the average newspaper is reallllllly tabloidy looking, especially Aftonbladet and the free ones you get on the train. There definitely are, however, some newspapers that are serious and look the part as well. I’m no expert in Swedish newspapers, so maybe other readers will have more suggestions, but I think that Svenska Dagbladet is one of the leading papers (http://www.svd.se/). Because I live in Lund, in the southernmost region of Sweden, I also check out Sydsvenskan when I want to find out what’s going on in my area (http://www.sydsvenskan.se/). 

    For the purposes of language learning, though, I actually kind of like the free newspapers, tabloidy as they are. (I’m just going to keep using my made up word here… :D ). The language is simple, the articles are short, and there are giant pictures–kind of like an adult picture book. So for language learning purposes, if you can forgive the aesthetics, it can be pretty helpful. 

    Thanks for your comment, and thanks for reading!
    Best – Kate

  • Courtney

    I just discovered your blog – which is wonderful :) I’m trying to learn Swedish before hopefully moving to Sweden once I’ve completed my schooling here. Thanks for the tips – I have friends in Sweden to write to but not speak to and I talk to my only English speaking boyfriend på svenska whether he understands me or not :P . Thanks again!

  • http://www.transatlanticsketches.com Kate

    Hey Courtney! Thanks so much for reading my blog! :) Good for you for trying to learn Swedish before you get here. Moving abroad can be totally overwhelming at first, and any advance knowledge you have of the language will only help you feel more comfortable… plus it will lay the groundwork for you to jump right in and start speaking. Yay! Good luck with school! Kate

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