I’d enrolled myself into Swedish language classes a while ago, but had to miss many classes due to a work related trip abroad, and it was hard to keep up with the rest of the classmates after that, so I’d discontinued the lessons. Now that my wife has arrived in Sweden, I thought it would be a good thing to start brushing up on my Svenska again.

The Android app Duo Lingo didn’t have Swedish when I started learning, back in 2013, but introduced it shortly after, but I remember the app being far less appealing back then. That, however is history. When I installed the app again, I found it to be very well structured, easy to use, and it seems to ease you gently into grammar. The first two levels, Basics and Basics 2 introduce nouns (man, kvinna, pojke…), pronouns (han, hon…), and simple verbs (äter, läser…), the phrases level taught simple sentences while also gently easing into the definite article. Swedish has two indefinite articles, en and ett, but unlike English, it doesn’t have a clear rule indicating the correct choice, and instead, it’ll have to be learned on a word by word basis. The definite article in Swedish is not a standalone word like ‘the’, but instead is a variation of the subject, and is decided by the definite article that is used with it.
E.g: En elefant = An elephant, and elefanten = The elephant; Ett barn = A child, and barnet= The child.

The app allows one to hear pronounciations of not only the whole sentences, but also of individual words in the sentence, and this is a superb feature for beginners.

I’ve been spending some time now on the app, and I can confidently say that I’ve learned more with it over a few hours than I did, with several days worth of classes. That’s not to say the classes were bad, but it was like trying to drink water out of a fire-hose; the ability to learn and progress at one’s own pace is a great thing.