aaaaaah, lots of things to chew on… *gnaw gnaw*

the same to you lothus, have a great summer! but check in here now and then and let us know you´re still alive

hugs &

Kan du komma inreda åt mig oxå? f´låt jag skriver på svenska men jag kan ej språket så bra.. Om ngn vill så kan de översätta.

Mymlan says: Can you decorate for me too?

Ahh i want that…All of it :D

Have a great and warm and sunny summer =D

I really love those branches!

I tip for you people who can't find the english words sometimes: http://lexin2.nada.kth.se/sve-eng.html

#4 the best ever online dictionary… i used it for english/romanian/finnish….. and some other  stuffs,,,

Yes, my english vocabulary is not that well so I use lexin very often for help! :)

Same here!  Love that site!

Wonderful mouse home! I'm very envious. :)

#4 I´ve been using that lexicon for many years now

even if it doesn´t show…

I´m a bit lazy and actually I don´t care if my english, and english spelling, is bad - I never had any problem being understod

I'ts not so important to write "good". The important thing is to understand each other!

I think you can tell that you use english quite a lot, Grodan.

I thought about something, talking about terrariums, that a perfekt way to cool a shut cage in summer is to put a bowl or plate with ice in it. When the ice melts it will make the terrarium a bit cooler. You can't do that with a barred cage.

(barred cage= min översättning på gallerbur)

#10 Yes, to use it is the only way to learn it, I think. But I still think it´s a bit difficult to read english books (novels).

That´s a good hot-summer-tip!

Yes, and the fact is that whatever language you learn from birth it will be that language you learn best in. Your mother tongue will always be the language to start from. That's one reason that it aint so good to read an education about for an example biology in english if you aren't english, because a swedish person can never learn as well in english as in swedish.(And that's a fact, I learned that in the education for swedish teachers)

Yes! I have a cage at home built from a display case with doors of glass and I use to put ice in it and it gets so much cooler then my other barred cages.

(mother tongue= modersmål) (display case= vitrinskåp)

As u say learning a language from the start is a  key to learn it well. But some people just have a head for languages. My husband moved from romania as a five year old and yet he speaks much much better finnish and english then his mothertongue, romanian.

Is the best way to get  a barred cage cooler to use popcorn? And when do you know if its to hot and in need of cooling down? =D

Yes, that might be true, but researches shows that you can never lern and feel as much in a new language as your mother tongue.

I believe that what the conclusions experienced scientists on languages has come to is to take serious. Even if he understands and express himself in english and finnish as good as romanian or even better he unconciuosly always translates in his head from romanian. Even if it sometimes goes so fast that he probably doesn't even notice it!

That is also one reason that immigrants always shall get a chance to develope their mother tongue, becouse if they stop their developement on their own language then they'll have harder to learn the new language. Most lucky is a person with many different languages becouse he gets a wider perspective at things!

Of course I have words in my head that I grab more easily in english then in swedish too, but that's something different!

Yeah he cant answer in what language he thinks in. Tho i think that the mothertongue needs to always be talked because as it is now the only ones he talks romanian to are his parents and their friends. At home we speak english and he speaks finnish everywhere else.

I do feel that since i moved here im "loosing" swedish words. They have a different swedish in finland and we always talk english since i dont know finnish. I put in english words to easy if i dont immidiatly find the swedish one. And since all my friends know english they dont mind..
Its a bit disturbing and therefore i hardly ever read english books anymore even tho i do need to challenge my english all the time to make it better.

Of course you loose a bit of your swedish when you don't use it. Well, you don't loose it but you get a little rosty! :P So if you wan't to develope both languages or maybee even three languages you should keep your swedish alive. Do also keep your english alive if you feel that you express yourself good in english. Then you have two languages to compare finnish words with. Perhaps you don't have the exact translation in swedish. Then your english might get handy!

Yes, that is a very good way of seeing it. Wich language you think in. Maybe it's a mix! The different languages will complement each other where it's needed.

But if you drop your mother tongue totally you'll loose a very important way of easy learning. Your mother language is active in a different place in the brain. That's why a person who gets a stroke sometimes can't talk the mother tongue and remember his mothers name but can talk another language and tell which is the capital of Holland! That points to the importance of the mother tongues influence on learning and feelings. The mother tongue will always be most close to your heart if you know what I mean!

Ah yes. Im  not learning finnish activley im just learning something here and there. I do express myself good in english for being a "normal swede" but still its words i miss in english and then my husband gets a swedish word in the middle. Luckily he is awsome with languages and knows a lot swedish so it works okey.

I am afraid for our kids tho, since they will have 4 languages around them. I already told Marius that they will learn swedish and go to swdish school and he is okey with that. Then we have the english and then we have to choose between finnish and romanian. 3 languages is the most to teach a kid at the same time…

Don't worry about the kids! Probably they will get more then one language for mother tongue and that is a good thing! And if you want them to develope the languages as good as possible let them use them all. Probably swedish will be one of the closest languages becouse you talk it a lot.

A bad example is the finnish/swedish kids that went to swedish school at the 70:s. They had to learn everything in swedish in school and didn't know swedish good enough. they didn't have any chance to develoe their finnish either so you can say that they got no language at last. As if a 20 year old would have a language as good as a six year old.

BUT it's also shown that you can learn almost as many languages as possible. There is always room for more in your head and it makes your talking arena and language understanding bigger! :)

But now i think we have gone to far away from the threads start! :P

I dont know if  I want more languages in my head. Already mixing them up ;).

But yeah i have noticed that finnish/swedish kids mostly doesnt have a strong language only two minor. The balance is almost never there between finnish and swedish. I have one kid at kindergarden who has english and swdish as languages and that kid is doing much better then most. Probably because they have a real good balance at home.
And i noticed a tendency with mixin the thinking up aswell as sentences ;D But mostly when im tired.

Haha!

But one language doesn't make the other language worse. It makes it stronger! The thing is that you shouldn't force a language to a child that he doesn't understand and not let him develope the language he already has. That's the important thing. You don't force a kid to do equations before he knows what one plus one is. You need to have something to base your language on and therefor you need to develope your first language. And as said before, some kids has two mother tongues! At least one of them must get a chance to grow and that should be the language he has closest to him!

mm of course but i do think that children without a nice balanse between the languages they speak will get a stronger and a weaker language. Usually the wordknowledge(ordförråd) is lesser in children that speaks 2 languages. I work with 5-7 year old children and i only know about their languages not older.

Btw, language is a hard word :D

No, that is not true! Thats a very common oppinion but I just learned in my education as a swedish teacher that it really is not that way!

Many people thinks that a child with two languages has half the words a child with one language has but as already said, no, it doesn't work that way. your head has enough place for a lot of languages and the languages helps each other, they DON'T take place and deplete the mother tongue. A language can never shrink!

The reason they have two languages that are bad developed is that they get to little training in their mother tongue. That is what studies show. So my advise is to let the kids you work with use both their languages and develope their mother language at the same time as the other language. Those kids will have meny good opportunities in life!

Haha, yes it's a very difficult word!

(deplete= utarma)

Yeah i didnt mean that one language takes over i meant that as u said they dont get enough training. Unfortunetly some of the kids will have problems in school because of that and i just "left" two kids to school where they will have to give extra swedish training otherwise they wont be able to understand the teacher well enough :(.

Its also funny that some parents are so lazy that they are satisfied with basicly only swedish training in kindergarden. So when they find out i cant talk finnish at all and dont understand it they are happy…. and now the kids need extra help….

In all science there is exception since science is used as a general rule.

I´m sure if the science study these exceptions maybe there will be another answer.

My other language is German. I can understand almost everything, especially when I´m in Germany or talk and hear German all day long. But to talk is another thing. I feel ashame and got a bad vocabulary and the grammatics I don´t understand at all.

But many times I can think and dream in German… (even when I haven´t spoken or heard German in a long time)

When I speak English many ours/days I start to think in English…

But which one of those languages do you count as your mother language, Grodan? Mother language is the language you are most influenced of approxiamately from 0 to 6 years of age.

And studies shows that if you loose to much of your mother language you will have problems with learning. Of course there are many other things that influences your learning, too. It doesn't mean that you can't talk at all just becouse you don't let the mother language grow.

A friend of mine is born in Armenia and moved to sweden when she was about ten. She learned Swedish very quickly and got very rosty in armenian. Now she lives in the states and hardly speaks either swedish or armenian any more. But of course it's not all gone! It comes back to you if you use it! She says that she thinks in english now.

Well, I think Swedish is my mother language, but I cannot be sure… There was 3 languages spoken when I was a child: german, dannish and swedish.

Hihi, that's a great mix!

I'd lika to be better to undertand Danish and Norwegian. I understand English better then our neighbur languages! :O

I don´t understand all Danish, or I have something against it…

I often think in English. My vocabulary is ok, but my pronounciation leaves much to wish for, at least nowadays. Part of it is because I have a short "tongue band", but I can't blame that entirely. I have no problem reading in English (actually, I prefer it) and I never watch am/uk/aussie/can movies with subtitles, it annoys the heck out of me.

However, I've worked with kids a lot, and in practice I believe what matters most is talent for learning languages, and also intelligence. I'm sorry, but there are stupid kids. Plain and simple. Hence the scary big amount of stupid adults, they didn't exactly start out smart and got more and more dumb over the years. But please note that I'm not talking about dyslectic kids or anything like that, of course there are those that have gaps in their language skills for various reasons that has nothing to do with being dense.

Haha, I think that's the case with me, too! It's just Swäääiibuuäääjjooääjj for me! :P It's hard enough to read but when I try to speak with a danish person I just stop listen couse it's too straining!

(Straining= ansträngande? :P Inte så säker på den översättningen!)

#30 what? swäääiibuuääj…..? (if i dont understand this zamwyn will put me with the "stupid kids"…)

hehe

#30 thats a correct translation btw :D

And i definetly believe in what Zamwyn says about stupid kids. And you need intellegence and talent or atlest interest for languages.

I have a good prenounciation but i spell like a 10 year old. When i talk people dont think im from sweden. =D

A friend told me that english is so easy to learn because u can have a good conversation without a lot of words. He was told this bt an english university professor and i do believe its true.

Swäääiibuuäääjjooääjj means hi, I'm danish! :D

I think you spell very good, Thiah!

I think I'm quite okey at grammar and spelling, both in swedish and in english. But my vocabulary in english is really bad! That's why Lexin works so good for me! :P

My boyfriend has a huge vocabulary in english! And he talks very well and understands better then me both when he listens to and reads english. He is also better then me to make himself understandable. He got a G in english. I got an MVG. That is not fair at all!

How do you translate swedish school grades into english, btw?

Oh we dont translate them really i think.They dont have the same system at all. I bet we are like the only country having only 3 steps in grading. Finnish has 10……

And Marius is weird on languages.. Hes over intellegent and a bit autistik så he has so easy to see patterns in grammar and such…

He is a bit autistic? I think autistic children are so interesting!

I have an autistic brother and have worked with kids who has aspergers syndrom, a form of autism. They are very often intelligent and has exciting thoughts and language!

Yeah he is ad/hd and with that he has both asberger and autism.. They arent so "visible"  as the ad/hd but its there..

I understand Danish quite well after 15 years in Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden for those who does not know. Malmö is just about 35 minutes from Kopenhagen/Köpenhamn by train. If they speak all to fast, I do not understand them. Niether their numbers from nie og tyve(29).

#31 LOL

 #35 A friend of mine has a daughter with autism, and she's an amazing kid! You know just by looking at her she's special. There's just something about her… She's had trouble with speaking, but for her it's also connected to her hearing and goes through hearing therapy sometimes, AIT.

#38… Marius hasnt obvious problem with the autism but he has with the impusivness and hyperactivity that comes with the ad/hd. Fortunatley for us he calms down by me just being around so i can "controll" some of it thats hasnt been "controlled" before.  Not all couples has it that easy.

"Hijack This Thread", ha, ha, haaa….

Nice that you all found a place to discuss the English language 

Hope you enjoy the summer inspite of the rain, thunder and lightning

We had a mighty thunderstorm here couple of days ago. I was playing a horrorgame on my pc and tought it was soo nice. It coludnt be more exiting

See´ya!