Posts tagged with "book review"

“Swedish – An Essential Grammar” – book review

Posted by Transparent Language 4 Comments
Feb 13 2009

“Swedish – An Essential Grammar”
Authors: Philip Holmes and Ian Hinchliffe
Published by Routledge
ISBN: 0-415-16048-0

I totally forgot I had this book. Yesterday I was cleaning out some stuff and whoops, it just fell out of the box and hit me on the head.

I think I packed it away because once upon a time I really didn’t care for it all that much. What turned me off was the language in this book. It’s highly specialized. You need to really know your grammar and grammatical terms to make sense of the explanations in this volume. Otherwise you’ll be stuck trying to make sense of such sentences:
“Some indeclinable adjectives may be used either attributively or predicatively.” Or
“Often the separated forms are concrete and the integral forms abstract in meaning.” Yeah, like, totally.

But I guess in the last few years my tolerance for this sort of language has dramatically increased (living in Sweden will do that to you) and this morning I’ve started to read this book again. And I have to say that despite the sometimes tedious explanations, this is a wholly excellent book.

True, sometimes you may need someone to explain things to you using simple words shorter than three syllables. But apart from that, this is a great Swedish grammatical reference.

It covers everything that needs to be covered, it’s very well organized (always a plus in a grammar book) and gives you more examples of the stuff it explains than you’ll ever need.

In short: to buy or not to buy? Definitely – to buy.
Two thumbs up!

201 Swedish Verbs

Posted by Transparent Language 4 Comments
Jan 3 2009

Do you like learning about verbs? I mean, learning foreign verbs? If you’re like me, you probably love it and detest it, depending on the weather.

Someone asked me not so long ago about a good book when it comes to mastering Swedish verbs. And I think I mentioned “201 Swedish Verbs (fully conjugated in all the tenses)” but honestly, I don’t know what on earth I was thinking.

“201 Swedish Verbs (fully conjugated in all the tenses)” by Richard Auletta and Leif Sjöberg, ISBN 0-8120-0528-7

I have this book. And let me tell you, as far as verb books go, this one is well, how to put it nicely… I guess “mediocre” will have to do.

The concept is great. I’ve used books from this series (Barron’s Educational Series) for learning Spanish and French. I liked how they explained everything in excruciating detail, and how the verbs were presented in all the tenses and forms and what not. It was designed for dummies like me. It was just perfect.

But the “201 Swedish Verbs” book is far from perfect. Why? Oh, let me count the ways!

  • 1. Swedish verbs stay the same regardless of which subject pronoun you use, whether it is jag, du, han, hon, vi, ni or de, the verb form stays the same.
    Yet, all the forms with their applicable pronouns are listed on every page
  • 2. Just like in English, some Swedish verbs are irregular. But many are perfectly regular, and after you’ve seen a couple of them, you can follow the pattern in your sleep.Yet, such perfectly regular verbs as “arbeta” (to work) and “baka” (to bake) and “börja” (to begin) and many, many others are included in the book.
  • 3. Some Swedish verbs are very similar to the ones in English. So similar in fact, that you have absolutely no doubt regarding their meaning.Yet such verbs are also included in this book: “kritisera” (to criticize) and “öppna” (to open) for example. And wouldn’t you know it? It’s a regular verb, too!
  • 4. Most foreign language learners are interested mainly in irregular verbs, right? Those are the ones that give students the most trouble.
    So why not make a book chock-full of irregular verbs instead?
  • 5. The book was first published in 1975. It claims to include all the verbs which occur in the three thousand words in Swedish. Well, that might have been the case in 1975, but really, who in this day and age uses the word “to curtsy” (niga)?
    In the authors defense, it IS an irregular verb, though it’s far from a common one these days.
    The book is in a desperate need of an update, that much is clear.

Yet, if you are struggling with Swedish verbs, this might be a helpful choice.

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