"You're really good in swedish!" Seriously?!

Photo: http://talkbetweenpeople.wordpress.com

Nope, that's not an ESC related post. (We'll get to them eventually. Too busy right now) This is a personal one. Apparently, everyone (well let's say 98% of them) in Sweden that I talk to seems so surprised by me. Especially when they hear that I'm in Sweden since September 2010. They go like "wow", "amazing", "you're really good in swedish" etc. I mean really? Looks like everyone thinks that. Everyone BUT me. :S I still think it's the accent that misleads them. And damn I'm not using my real accent! When I'm alone, reading a text out loud I sound like a real Swede and I mean a real Swede. Don't know what happens to that real accent when I'm talking with someone. I guess it's a childhood trauma...

When I was 7 I started learning english. And before I even begin the lessons I knew (don't know how...) that it was "engliSH" and not "englis". And I remember the first day where we had to read a text (please note that the rest of the kids in class were one or two years older than me), I read it with (american, always american!) accent. So the teacher was like "oooh look at you! with accent!" while laughing but not at me. That was it! I never used the accent again. Only when I had an oral exam coz I knew it had to be perfect! Of course nowadays it's different. I'm using my accent both in english and swedish but as I said not 100%. But I'll reach 100% eventually.

Anyway the point of the post is that on Friday I will have to make an oral presentation. I had one in spring but I did it in english (the teachers were fine with that). Today I went to ask a few questions to our communication teacher (that's where I had those "wow" reactions about my swedish and made me blog about it) and one of the questions was if I could make my presentation in english. She said "no". She'll be there to evaluate our skills in communication (in swedish of course). But she also told me that I could make the presentation in english in the second part of the course (I'm so doing this in english!!). So here I am! "Ready" to speak swedish for the first time since May 2010! Yeah I speak swedish every day but this time I will have to stand there, speaking swedish in front of about 10 people and then answer their questions! Now that I think about it, this is worse than May 2010! Back then I had to sit in front of a lady (who told me she'd be looking down not to freak me out) and talk to a recorder for 15 minutes (15 minutes? ok maybe that was worse coz on Friday I'll need only 4-5 min). Of course I used only 10 minutes so only God knows how I passed that (yeah ESC and Mello saved me once again! huhu).

Oh well, I need to make a PowerPoint presentation and write my manuscript in swedish! Nah! I'll do it the Ifi-way (yeah like no one else does that). First in english, then translate it to swedish and we're good to go! Wish me luck!