Luca: Hi everybody, today I am with my friend Freja
Freja is from Sweden, how is it going up there Freja?
Freja: I am doing great what about you?
Luca: I am doing great myself thanks
Can you tell our audience who you are and how we got to know each other?
Freja: I am from Sweden. I study English and Italian at the university in Lund
Luca and I got to know each other when I was living in Madrid,
An Italian couple introduce showed Luca's videos to me
They said: "there is a super cool Italian guy who speaks a ton of languages"
And then when I used to live in Chile, I wrote to Luca if he wanted to be my English teacher and here we are.
That's how we got to know each other.
Luca: Even if I must say you didn't need English lessons because you used to speak English very well already at that time, like all Swedes.
And that's today's topic as a matter of fact.
Today I want to address an interesting topic, which is "why everybody speaks so good English in Sweden?
Not only in Sweden but in Norway and Danemark as well
Freja: A big reason I think is that
that we are surrounded by English since we are little kids.
If we go to the movies we always watch movies in the original version.
Movies, TV-series, we watch most of those in English. So we get to hear English a lot
Luca: So you watch TV in English all the time?
Freja: Yeah, they most broadcast things in English, some Channels offer more things in Swedish
but the majority of them are American TV-series
Luca: So you really get to hear English everywhere, on TV, radio...?
Freja: mmm, the radio is more in Swedish,
but if you go to the movies you always watch a movie in the original version.
There are French movies, Spanish movies, foreign movies, but most of those are from the US
Luca: So you think that all that plays a huge role?
I mean, if everybody watches TV in English, is it easier to speak English?
Because the thing is you "hear" but you don't "speak the language?
I mean, do Swedes have a lot of chances to SPEAK English when they live in Sweden?
Or maybe they talk to each other in English.
When I was in Sweden I heard people talking to each other in English,
and that didn't happen only when other foreigners were around.
I don't know, that's quite a strange thing for us Italians.
You know that a lot Italians don't speak English at all
..and the Scandinavians talk to each other in English, wow!
I don't know if it true in general, but I have witnessed it.
Freja: maybe some words here in there,
we tend to throw in some English words,
but I always speak Swedish with my Swedish friends and family.
But there is another thing that makes the difference,
and that's that in the school system a lot of importance
is given to communication in English, that is
in school as well in high school people can talk to each other and communicate in English.
So we get to hear English in our normal life, while we can can
speak it during the lessons.
We do something else too, obviously, but the main focus is on communication.
Luca: Right, in Italy for example we "study" English but we never get to practice it.
In France it is the same thing. They say" ok we learn English but we never speak it!".
So you are saying that in the Swedish school system you get to use English to talk to your schoolmates.
Freja: yes, but only during English lessons.
Luca: of course, not the whole time. Ok, very interesting.
Do you think that the fact that Swedish and Danish - all Scandinavian languages - belong to the same language group as English
makes it easy for you to learn English itself?
For example Italian and English are not as similar as
Swedish and English and that makes it a bit harder for us Italians.
What do you think about that?
Freja: yeah, absolutely. I think it makes it easier.
You don't need to think about everything when you speak:
the structure, where you put the verb etc..
But I think that the most important things to learn a language are
attitude and motivation to learn a language.
In this regard, we Swedes - as you know -
travel a lot - Danes, Swedes, Norwegians.
Swedish is spoken only in Sweden and within a small community in Finland,
so almost nobody speaks Swedish,
So it is quite difficult to find people who are learning Swedish,
so if I travel to a country and can only speak Swedish, I can practically talk to nobody.
So you must speak English if you want to travel, and in many companies in Sweden
the spoken language is English, because they are international companies,
so English is absolutely necessary in Sweden.
Luca: In small countries such as Portugal, the Scandinavian countries and so on people have to speak English.
In Italy, France or Spain it is not the same thing, because a lot of people speak Spanish or Italian.
Freja: exactly! I am learning Italian now and I can speak Spanish, so
there are a lot of people who can speak their language and
are interested in learning them.
I know some Italians who are learning Swedish in Sweden now, so there are also people learning our language. But they are not as many.
Luca: Freja, thanks a bunch for this interview and I'll talk to you soon
Freja: thank you! Take care
Luca: bye bye, ciao!