The many benefits of bilingualism (and multilingualism)

There is a Czech proverb I love which means: ‘You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you only know one language, you live only once’. 

Image by Zsuzsanna Ilijin

In much of the world, bilingualism and even multilingualism is the norm. The 2012 Eurobarometer report revealed that 98% of Europeans considered bilingualism to be important, and on average, 54% of Europeans are able to hold a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue. But in primarily English speaking countries fewer parents are raising their children to be bilingual. The fact that English is so widely spoken around the world is one of the main reasons for this, giving those of us with English as our mother tongue less of an incentive to learn another language to fluency. But bilingualism and multilingualism have numerous cognitive, cultural, and professional benefits for you and your children.

The benefits of bilingualism include:

• Creates a connection to your children’s cultural heritage, particularly important when parents come from two different cultures. This also means children can communicate with grandparents and other relatives who might not speak one of their languages;
• Ability to build friendships with a wider range of people, read the literature of that language in its original form, watch films in the language, and be exposed to a greater number of ideas and perspectives;
• Strengthening of cross cultural communication skills;
• Increased empathy: research by Princeton psychologists Paula Rubio-Fernández and Sam Glucksberg have shown that bilingual children are better able to put themselves in the shoes of others and understand a different point of view;
• Increased cognitive abilities, for example more effective multitasking: bilingualism decreases confusion when switching between tasks;
• There is increasing evidence that bilingualism can help to cope longer with Alzheimer’s: In a study of 200 Alzheimer’s patients, cognitive neuroscientist Ellen Bialystock revealed that bilingualism resulted in a 5 year delay of the onset of Alzheimer’s compared with monolingual patients. So while bilingual people still develop Alzheimer’s, they are able to better cope with the disease for longer, and function at a higher level than those who are monolingual.
• Bialystock also discovered that bilingual children also process language differently: for example she asked a number of monolingual and bilingual children whether the sentence “apples grow on noses” was grammatically correct. While a number of monolingual children became caught up in the silliness of the sentence, bilingual children were often able to establish that while the sentence did not necessarily make sense, it was in fact grammatically correct. This is because bilingualism can effect the executive control system, or rather bilingual children have an increased capacity to tune out noise while focusing on what is relevant;
• Career advantages: more and more jobs require a minimum of two languages. Want to work for international organisations, or the EU? Some of these jobs require three or more languages, or at least put you at a distinct advantage compared to monolingual candidates. Professors Louis Christofides and Robert Swidinsky discovered that in Quebec, Canada, men who speak English and French earn on average 7% more and women 8% more than this who speak only French.

Are you bilingual? Are you raising your children to be bilingual? Let me know or send me an email, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

How to find an apartment in Stockholm

Finding an apartment in a new country is always a bit of an adventure until you get the hang of the new system. Finding an apartment in Stockholm is a situation that strikes fear into the hearts of even the most adventurous, even after years in the city.

This is because unlike in every other city in the world I have lived in, as a foreigner it is almost impossible to get a first hand rental. Swedes can wait up to 10 years to get a first hand rental contract in Stockholm, an option not open to foreigners who might only remain in the city for a handful of years. As a result, the second hand rental market is flourishing, as people are not prepared to wait a decade for a reasonably priced apartment in the centre.

Here are a few tips to make this experience a little easier:

1. Someone who knows someone

This is the way I have found all of my apartments in Sweden, generally through someone who went to school with someone 15 years ago who saw a message from someone else on Facebook and forwarded the details to me because I said I was looking.This might sound a bit hard if you are new to the country and don’t know anyone, but you will be suprised how helpful people in Stockholm can be, even if you just met them once at a bar in Thailand 5 years ago – a sense of apartment seeking camaraderie seems to form in Stockholm.

Put a message on facebook telling people you are looking for a place, tell people you meet at parties, ask your HR department at work if they can send an email around to all the staff at your company or if they have someone who can help you look, post up a message on your blog that you are looking. Someone I met even found his place on twitter as someone he followed posted up an ad.

2. Blocket

This is a great site to find accommodation on, but keep in mind that to every apartment advertised, they will receive around 200 replies, so you have to make yours stand out. A friend of mind who found her apartment this way said she wrote a friendly email, telling the woman about herself and responding to key points in the message, making it obvious she was not simply copying and pasting the same reply, but had in fact composed a personal email. The woman replied saying she was one of only two who had written a personal reply, and after a viewing she got the apartment.

Go to Bostad – Lägenheter – Uthyres i Stockholm – and then choose the area you want to look in.

Write your replies in Swedish if you can, unless the ad is in English. It will make your chances of a response much higher – if needed, get a friend to help you create a template in Swedish that you can change around fairly easily.

You will need to search every day, multiple times a day, and reply as soon as possible. Apartments tend to go fast, and viewing are often the same day the ad is published.

Another tip with Blocket is to compose your own ‘looking for an apartment’ ad in the Önskar hyra i Stockholm section. Here the key is to write a nice description of yourself, about your work/studies, and remember to include a picture of yourself. Again, write in Swedish if you can, and you can always write a longer message in English after if you like.

3. Bostad Direct

This is another site to find apartments on, although this one is a paid service/highway robbery, where you pay 695 SEK per 45 day period to access contact information about various apartments.

The apartments here tend to be quite expensive, particularly in relation to their small size, but this is certainly an option while you look for something else at a better price.

Additionally they offer corporate rentals, and these tend to be a bit better than the public rentals, so have a chat to your company and see if they would be willing to help. Keep in mind prices can be negotiated, I know of a few people who have brought the prices of corporate rentals down but a few thousand crowns a month as the owners would rather rent through a company than straight to the public.

4. Other website and options

– Andrahandsguiden

– bopunkten

If you are a member of couchsurfing they have a section under the Stockholm group for those searching for and offering apartments.

I have even heard of people buying Google adsense advertisements, or placing advertisements in newspapers such as DN in the bostad section.

5. Short term rentals

Companies like Citylivingapt offer expensive apartments for short term rental. This could be an option if you need a place for a couple of weeks while you wait to move into another apartment,  or if you are only in Stockholm for a month or two.

6. Advertise yourself in buildings you like

I have seen plenty of people place posters up in the entrance ways to apartment buildings they like saying they are looking for a rental, a bit about themselves and their contact details. Even if the poster gets taken down after a day, it might pay off. You can also do this on the notice boards of supermarkets, and I have seen people also post on street lamps… yes really.

I have also heard of people who call up new building developments in Stockholm saying they are looking to rent any apartment that becomes available there. One particular couple with a baby managed to get a great apartment in Hammarby Sjöstad this way. Why restrict yourself to new developments? Check out companies that build apartment buildings in Stockholm and give them a call – they might be able to put you in touch with whoever manages their old builds.

7. Buy an apartment

After moving a few times in a year, you might be fed up and decide it is time to buy. Given the ridiculous pricing of second hand rentals in Stockholm, I know people who pay less for their loan per month than they did to rent. I’ll post about buying in more detail later, but for now, the best place for you to look is Hemnet – this is where pretty much every apartment for sale in Stockholm is listed.

Things to be aware of

There are of course many scammers around trying to make money. Be aware of people who are unable to show you the apartment in person because they are living overseas for various reasons/have had to pop out of the country on a business trip etc, and want you to transfer money to a bank account as a deposit after which they will send you the keys. Generally these apartments are very attractively priced and in excellent locations.

Now this sounds pretty obvious, but often attached to these emails are scanned ID cards/passports of a Swedish person, contracts, etc, to make it appear legitimate. Suffice to say, if you are not able to meet in person, forget it.

But don’t give up

The main tip is to keep looking, and try not to get too disheartened. Put in enough time and effort and you will find something. Even if you need to stay six months in the outer suburbs, once you have made a few more friends your network will widen and someone will know someone who has a place for rent.

Good luck! (and if you have any more tips and trick, post below and share your knowledge)

SFEJ: a Swedish learning update

I have had a couple of emails about the intensive Swedish class I took – SJEJ, so I thought I would post up a quick update.

I took the class for almost three months, ending when I flew back to Australia for my wedding in May. The course was for 4 hours a day – 8am to 12 Monday to Friday, with an additional 1 hour reading class each week, and 4 hours extra study time once a week which we could use to write our essay for the week, do our reading and so on (although almost everyone went home for this).

We were expected each week to read a section of a book given to us in the reading class (around 20 – 30 pages), in addition to writing an essay on a topic related to the theme of the week (the judicial system, Swedish holidays, etc). We also went on two excursions while I was in the course – one to the parliament, and the other to the court house where we watched a couple of court cases – and we had to write essays based on what we observed. The excursions were actually really interesting, and we had a great tour guide at the parliament.

In order to pass the course (level D of SFI) we had to have read one Swedish novel, or a number of easy to read novels, and write a review of them, we also had to give a presentation in front of the class on a topic of our choice (5 to 10 minutes plus questions), and finally we had to take an exam: written, spoken and listening.

I have mixed feelings about the class, which contributed to my not going back after my holiday.

Going to class for 4 hours each day will undoubtably improve your Swedish, and my confidence with spoken Swedish definitely improved during this time as everyone spoke Swedish during class and in the breaks. This was helped by the fact that I was the only native English speaker in the class, bar one, and so we had to communicate in Swedish – luckily we were in a high enough level that this was possible – it would be more difficult to do this in the beginner class. That said, with 35 people in my class and only one teacher, the opportunity to actually speak with the teacher was limited, and we relied on people who had been in the class longer to correct us during discussions. This is ok, but not so great for actually learning correct pronunciation and so on.

The class also moved very slowly. For example, one morning each week we had to listen to an episode of an easy speaking Swedish radio program – this last around 10 minutes an episode, and then we had to fill in the answers to around 20 questions based on the program. This took a maximum of around 30 – 40 minutes for me, listening to the program at least twice, and then playing more challenging sections back a few times. However – we were given a good 2 hours to complete this task. This was indicative of the whole of the course – an hour to fill in a sheet, 3 hours to create a 15 minute group power point presentation, 40 minutes to discuss 3 questions. On the bright side, it did give me more opportunity to speak in Swedish to other class mates who had finished early.

We used a combination of textbooks, print out grammar exercises, TV and Radio programs and photocopies of Swedish books – similar to what we used at Folkuniversitetet, although moving much more slowly through the material.

Would I recommend SFEJ to those wanting to work in Sweden in Swedish? Yes and no.

Considering the class is free, is for at least 20 hours a week, and you have the opportunity to focus on your area of professional experience, the class is fairly good. As there was an attendance requirement (or you could not return), people did mostly turn up each day, which was good and meant there was not anyone really far behind the others.

Once you get past the basic stages of the language, most of your progress is up to you. There were people in my class who progressed much more quickly than everyone else because they only spoke Swedish to their friends, only read in Swedish and only watched Swedish TV – most of their progress could be attributed to their extra study, rather than what they learnt in class.

One day a week we had another teacher. He was nicknamed the grammar god by my class mates, and he really did have a gift for teaching. During this class I gained a deeper understanding of Swedish grammar than I have even in paid Swedish classes, however you are not able to pick and choose your teachers at SFEJ, and we only had him for 4 out of the 21 hours of class a week. At the end of the day, language classes are only as good as your teacher, and that is really not something you can control at SFEJ.

You can always enrol and try it out – it might be that you are in a class with a brilliant teacher and you learn a lot. However, if you want to improve your Swedish to a level that allows you to work in the language, this course alone will not get you there (I don’t think any course will, for that matter). You need to supplement it with a lot of reading in your spare time, speaking Swedish with natives, and writing. The most useful part of SFEJ for me were the essays. Writing each week and having my grammar and word choices corrected was invaluable, and I think many of the teachers would be open to checking another essay from you each week as well if you wanted to do some extra work.

So if you have the time to attend each week, it might be worth trying it out for a month – If you are very self disciplined, and study for a few extra hours a day on top of SFEJ though, you should be reaching your language goals fairly quickly, and the class might be useful for you, if only for the chance to chat in Swedish with your class mates and having your writing corrected. But if you are looking for the opportunity to be in a class with fewer people and a teacher you actually have the opportunity to speak with for more than 5 minutes a day, then you might want to consider paying for a class or tutoring and skipping SFEJ.

European news in English

Are you living in Europe and looking for looking for country specific news in English? Take a break from the BBC, CNN and so on and check out some great websites!

Austrian Times is a great source of Austrian news in English, along with the more targeted (although less regularly updated) Vienna Times and Salzburg Times. This franchise also has Croatian and Romanian news in English.

In Sweden, The Local exists to keep you up to date on Swedish news – well newsish … if you are looking for detailed articles on what is happening politically in Sweden, perhaps this is not the place to go, however, if you want to be up to date on what ridiculous things Swedish elks have been caught doing this week, you are in luck! Just steer clear of the comments section, lest you loose hope for the future of humanity.

The Local also has English news for France, Switzerland, Germany and Norway as well. I have to say the German version seems to be a cut above the rest with quite a few very interesting, well research articles. Their forum Toytown Germany is also a great source of information for anyone living in Germany or who is planning on moving there.

Speaking of brilliant English news resources in Germany, you really can’t beat The Spiegel‘s international section. I am endlessly impressed by the quality of the articles they have on offer there, not only relating to Germany, but also Europe as a whole. The coverage of the Eurocrisis (as much as I hate the term and carry on) has been brilliant. I really hope the Spiegel’s precedent starts a trend of English/international sections in quality non-English newspapers.  It is so important for English speakers to expose themselves to the point of view of other countries, something I think we need to do a bit more of especially when the large majority of English speakers are not multilingual.

For Spanish news in English, the Olive Press claims to be number 1 and seems to be regularly updated.

Corriere Della Sera offers Italian news in English.

PressEurop translates articles from a selection of European newspapers in Spain, Greece, The Czech Republic and Romania, France, the UK, Germany, Serbia and Luxembourg into into English, German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish and Czech each day.

For more French news in English, check out The Connexion and France 24. In a completely different league, try the English edition of the beautifully written publication Le Monde diplomatique. While it is not just focused on France, it is still well worth reading.

For brilliant, in depth essays on Europe related cultural topics, check out Eurozine. This is more in keeping with an academic journal than a newspaper, and offers translations in a variety of languages.

Swiss news can be found here and here.

The aptly named Baltic Times covers news from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

For more Greek news, have a look at Athens News, which seems to be filled with quite comprehensive, well written articles.

For Dutch news in English, check out these websites: here, here and here. For a Hague specific newspaper, check out this website.

The best place for Icelandic news is the Facebook group for The Iceland Weather Report. Also visit her blog, although it is no longer being updated, Alda provided a fascinating (and tireless) coverage of the Icelandic financial crisis as it happened, not to mention an entertaining commentary on Iceland and Icelandic people. And if you want to laugh, check out Iceland’s twitter account, their website, Icelandwantstobeyourfriend is also hilariously cute. Takk Takk did a very good job of re-inventing Iceland’s image, I think!

Living in Denmark? Don’t feel left out, Politiken offers excellent coverage of Danish and world news.

Searching for some Finnish news? You are in luck! Helsinki Times has Finnish news in English, as does Helsingin Sanomat.

The Warsaw Voice offers Polish news in English.

The Slovak Spectator has Slovakian news in English. It seems irregularly updated.

Looking for Russian news? Try The Moscow Times and The St. Petersburg Times.

The bonus of most of these news sites is that they also have a listing of English speaking jobs in whichever country they cover.

Do you know of any news sites in English that I have missed? Let me know!

Swedish mistakes

If you ever move to Sweden, please learn from my mistake today, so you don’t miss important appointments.

Half 2 = 1.30 pm not 2.30 pm. I am going to stick to the 24 hour system from now on!