David Bowie Was an Oddity

Today, David Bowie passed away after an eighteen month battle with cancer. It was completely unexpected. No one knew he was sick. He even released an album just a few days ago. I can’t say I was a fan of his, but he’s the kind of person that can affect or influence pretty much anyone in some way.

When I was a kid, and I saw him on TV, there was some kind of attraction to his showmanship. He was strange. He was an oddity. And the fact that many of his songs had something to do with space just made him even more of an attractive singer and musician. I loved space, and he was just one really weird person who kept appearing on TV. I may have only been around five, six, or seven years old, but whenever I was asked who my favourite singer was, I’d say David Bowie. Not because I liked his music, but because he was weird.

And now he is gone. Many people I know were taken by complete surprise. He had this image that was immortal. He wasn’t supposed to die. He’s supposed to live forever. Of course, that’s not possible, but he just gave off that feeling.

I thought this song of his was kind of appropriate for today.

Goodbye, Starman. You were a space oddity.

Test Driving Languages – Swedish

Another Germanic language done. This time, it’s the Scandinavian language of Swedish. It’s said that Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are all very similar languages. I can see what they mean. Having already looked at Norwegian, I can see a lot of similarities. But does it make it easy to learn?

Jag är en man.

— I am a man.

Alphabet

This is another alphabet, since it’s the Roman alphabet with a handful of accented vowels. It’s not difficult at all.

Pronunciation

This is where it’s getting a bit difficult for me. Words are pronounced differently than I first thought. Some are just confusing me, to be honest. And it’s only a couple pronouns that are tripping me up. Accents also change the pronunciation of vowels, but it’s fairly straightforward.

Grammar

Much like Norwegian, verbs are not conjugated. That’s easy! However, like Norwegian, indefinite articles come before the noun, and definite articles are added as a suffix. Unlike Norwegian, definite and indefinite articles are not spelled and pronounced the same. As for gender, nouns either have gender or are neutral. I think you just have to remember what they are. In general, grammar is fairly straightforward, though.

Overall Impression

Word retention was good, spelling was not always correct. I forgot some spellings, but practice will improve that. I can see how similar it is to Norwegian, so this will give me an advantage in studying. It may also be a disadvantage, because I may get them mixed up. I hope not! But I think I can count this as another language that I look forward to learning. It’s fairly easy from an English speaker’s point of view.

Are you interested in Swedish? Have you studied Swedish? Let me know in the comments below.