Philip Shaw, a Brit working as a professor of English at the University of Stockholm explained in Saturday’s Aftonbladet newspaper (printed on 19 June 2010) that Danes and the Dutch did better in an American English test, which seemed to go against the widely-held opinion that Swedes are the best English speakers in Europe outside of the British Isles. (Aftonbladet actually wrote "utanför Storbritannien", meaning "outside of Britain", but I am sure many Irish people believe they speak English pretty well too :-).)
Perhaps Swedes are more familiar with British English - who knows? Regardless of the test, from my experience, Swedes speak English very well which is a God-send for people like me who haven't got past butchering the Swedish language on a regular basis.
In fact, many Swedes speak English so well that sometimes it's possible to forget that they aren't native English speakers. And I think this is where the problem can lie: we stop making allowances when errors or word slips do occur. Translating one language into another is rarely a simple process and what sounds perfectly fine in Swedish may not directly translate into English, hence Carl-Henric Svanberg's gaff last week. The native English speaker must remember that no matter how fluent a non-native English speaker sounds, it will still be harder for them to understand nuances and intonation and the appropriate use of some words. It will always be difficult for them to speak like a native, just as I can never hope to sound like a born and bred Swede - that's just the way it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment