Mission Stories - Language

Language is a missionary's most important tool. Knowing different languages is really useful and important - indeed key - for missionaries. In Sweden all missionaries know at least two languages - Swedish and English (while I was there there were individuals who also knew Finnish, Spanish, French or other languages). While I was in Sweden all the missionaries were (North-)Americans or Finns. So apart from the finlandsvenska (Finns who speak Swedish as their first language), missionaries can't speak Swedish when they find out they're going to serve in Sweden. (There is a general unwritten rule that a missionary won't serve in his home mission, except under some particular circumstances. Though in Sweden we do sometimes have Swedish short-time missionaries who are missionaries for a couple months or so. And they of course know Swedish.) Anyway. Now that I've approached it from every possible angle, I can go back to the generalisation: Missionaries in Sweden have to learn Swedish.

When a missionary is called to serve, they go to the MTC to learn to be a missionary, and to learn the language. Missionaries sent to Sweden have an intense nine-week "eat-breathe-live Swedish" -stay in the Provo MTC and then they are launched off to the field. And they learn quick, it is astonishing! (This actually applies to all languages that are spoken in countries where the Church is allowed to send missionaries to. The legendary Finnish president Urho Kekkonen is known to have said that "Finnish can only be learnt by babies born in Finland and mormon missionaries." There is even a myth that the KGB sent spies to the Provo MTC to try to figure out what is this technique of learning a language that works so fast and whether it could applied to spies).

It's a pretty simple programme: 1) study the language every day and 2) use it as much as possible. Missionaries in the MTC are told to talk Swedish - even though they have a vocabulary of 10 words. But that's how it works, by using it. They are first taught how to pray in Swedish, and how to bear their testimony in Swedish (two of the most important things that missionaries ever do). Or in principle: find out what you want to say, and find out how it's said. Then say those things until you can think of more things to say, then expand. Also reading (especially the Book of Mormon) and reading out loud are some really basic language learning tricks that missionaries use.

Though I must admit that missionaries do have some unfair spiritual advantages in learning their mission language. Near all missionaries have at least one experience where God has helped them communicate or understand, and we often speak of the gift of tongues in relation to missionaries (we don't believe in "the gift of tongues" where you just kind of speak gibberish, we understand it literally as speaking a real language in a miraculous way when it is really needed).

My gift of tongues moment wasn't very impressive. It happened early in my mission, I was in church on a Sunday and all of a sudden the lady teaching the lesson asked me to sum up the Plan of Salvation. I stood up and explained it clearly and briefly in beautifully understandable Swedish, then sat down and whispered to my companion "what just happened?" :P Related to this: I found something I wrote in a diary in an early part of my mission when my Swedish was a little shaky: "I understand Swedish by the Spirit. When I talk to an angry person it is really hard to understand because the Spirit is not there to help me understand." Thinking about it now in hindsight, this applies to all communication: it is more difficult to understand what is being said when the speakers are upset.

Missionaries sometimes do a thing called "English fast" which means that they are not allowed to speak English at all that day/week, Swedish only. I love speaking English way too much, so I never did that >_> But even though I love English so much, I also did learn to love the Swedish language, and for that I'm really grateful that I got to serve in Sweden. I really have a passion for Swedish now just like I have a passion for English (next up: French!) I love the grammar and vocabulary, and one of my most favourite things to do towards the end of my mission was to teach Swedish class (to foreign students or immigrants).

In my last area our group of students was so small that I just started to make up the classes myself based on what they needed to learn and what I had observed was the hardest things about Swedish. I made up games about pronunciation and listening, and I did topics that were useful and had enough variety in level that even the really advanced guy in class kept going "oh! You have taught me something new! They never told me this is SFI (Swedish For Immigrants)!"

But before I could teach Swedish, I had to learn Swedish. I didn't get the nine-week MTC-thing. I had studied Swedish in school (as all Finns, it's mandatory), so they thought I knew Swedish. This was not actually true, but I didn't complain to anyone. So my MTC experience was short and all in English. I just kind of started to try to learn Swedish by myself from books, to bring it back. My trainer did say that upon arrival my stage of Swedish was pretty much the same as any American missionary's who came through the Provo MTC. So I didn't struggle more than the next greenie (and it is a struggle, of course, it is hard and scary to live in a country and not speak the language properly. That's why you have your trainer, the experienced missionary there to help you).

Another language teaching thing we did in my last area was teaching English. We had spread our Swedish class adverts everywhere, and this young couple from Iran contacted us and asked if we'd also teach English. We said we would, and we started meeting with them. And it was wonderful, we had a little English conversation class with them, helped them write and speak, went over grammar and pronunciation (fact: "world" is the single most difficult word to pronounce! At least to iranians. We almost went crazy going over this one with them). In the end it was more like just meeting to chat about stuff. :P

I also read his articles (he studies for a PhD in Political Science of some kind, and needed to submit to journals to get published, so I helped him with the language), I still do this actually, we talk on Skype and go over his texts. :) I am so grateful that we got to meet them, we learnt so much about Iran and islam, they learnt a lot about USA and English, and we became dear friends. In short: I am totally going to travel to Iran to meet them some point (though it obviously means that I won't be able to go to Israel any time soon after that trip, or vice versa - but hey, it's only the Holy Land, right? >_> ) Anyhoo, I'm digressing. Back to language.


In the missionary schedule there is always an hour of language study every morning (albeit in practice it gets shafted at times <_< a lot actually). I had with me a slim grammar book from school times, then the usual missionary books in Swedish. And I really think that the best thing one can do when learning a language is to read the Book of Mormon in that language. (Praying in the language is important too.) But I also read children's books and at some point I took to singing hymns and patriotic songs in Swedish for language study. And as an eternally inquisitive being I recall reading the dictionary too. I bought a giant Swedish encyclopædia and highlighted and coloured the entries that I thought were interesting. I paid special attention to nature words, like animal/fish/bird species and plant names.

The most fun language study activity ever was Bananagrams. I had a companion that had it. It's a game, like Scrabble but there is no board, and all the letters are kept in a banana-shaped cloth pouch. So you take a certain amount of tiles and you make words (in Swedish) each on your own scrabble formation. When you use all your letters, you say "done" and you both have to take a new letter. Repeat and repeat until there are no new letters to take. So much fun. We were properly addicted. My favourite memory of Bananagrams was a Fast Sunday. We came home after church starving. A lady in church had given us a cassarole, with the instructions "just put it in the oven for 30-40 minutes and eat." We came home, heated the oven, put the cassarole in, then sat down on the floor to play Bananagrams (we had shafted language study that morning - on Sunday mornings all study was usually shafted), played until the food was ready. Then sat at the table, split the cassarole equally in half, ate in silence for 10-15 minutes and utterly destroyed that cassarole, then looked at each other a little baffled saying "well, I guess it was tasty..." :P

Something else about the language. Because it is such a big deal to missionaries and everyone is putting (varying degrees of) effort into learning it, it slowly starts to mangle your verbal (and written) expression. Certain Swedish words start to replace their English equivalents, or (as is the more common case) become frequently used because they don't have English equivalents. So you talk English with these funky words that slip everywhere.
Here are some:
-tack, ursäkta, etc... = "thanks", "sorry" etc politeness words start to replace their English counterparts.
-orka = to have the energy to (often used in the negative: "I don't have the energy to..." So among missionaries you hear Swenglish spoken: "I don't orka to find it now.")
-saft = the juice-stuff that is called "squash" in England, but for some reason my American fellow-missionaries weren't very familiar with the concept. So it's very heavy concentrated sugary juice that you pour a little bit in a glass and top up with water.
-trapp/trapphus = "stairs" (but singular)/"stair house" aka the staircase/corridor in apartment buildings.
-tvätt/tvättstuga = "laundry"/"laundry cottage" aka the communal washing room that apartment buildings have their washing machines and driers in.
-reklam = adverts, usually papery junk mail. Doors all over Sweden have little notes saying "no reklam thanks". Missionaries sometimes play a joke on the younger missionaries and say "ingen reklam tack" means "no religious people, thanks" and then say "but we knock them anyway, because they need the gospel too" and then see the greenie be really nervous :P
-faktist = "actually" This is a hard one, because it's a filler word that you use a lot in speech - but it sounds rude when mixing it with English!
-typisk = "typical" - a useful exclamation (after something negative happens) that I just never used in English before...
-jajamensam = I have never heard anyone explain this well, it just basically means "yes" but very strongly ("yes yes but... sam"?) You also hear the shorter version of jajamen.
-namenhej = Kind of a greeting. Especially useful when you have forgotten the name of the person who you are greeting, but main use is when meeting someone unexpectedly. Basically translates as "well but hello!" I once saw a cool badge in a cool shop that said "I've forgotten all of your names so from now on I'll call you all 'namenhej'!"

The next step in your lingual degeneration, after beginning to dot your speech with the occasional Swedish words, is that you start to speak bad English, by directly translating from Swedish and coming up with some very strange expressions. "Have it good" ("ha det bra" is used like "take care") is a good example. This may also develop into a game when you start to figure out how wonderfully some normal Swedish words are compounds of smaller words. An "investigator" ("undersökare") is a "miracle-seeker", "love" ("kärlek") is "dear play" etc... Translating names and other expressions becomes a fun game too: my last area Örebro becomes Penny Bridge, Örnsköldsvik is known as Eagle Shield Bay - and sometimes you wish another missionary "happiness to" (direct translation of "lycka till" which means "good luck").

In one Swedish class in Goth Fortress (Göteborg) we had an amazing student who uses language for playing around just like I do, and he asked the best questions, really hard ones that were always about the exceptions to the rule. And they used to make him really angry, like "why is Swedish like this, itäs crazy!" :P

One of the strangest expression things that I picked up in Sweden was the Norrlandish way of saying "yes" - which is not a word at all. It is a sharp inhalation, like taking a careful sip of a glass that is too full. It is the coolest thing <3 And they say that the higher up you go in Norrland, the longer the inhalation. ÖP

Eventually you even start to pick up the Swedish accent when you speak English - most problematic emblem of it being mixing up v and w ("wideogames" *shakes head in shame*) and y and j (in expressions like "young" or "just": "Ven I as joung I vas yust yoking around") The best y/j problem story that I've ever heard: a member asked a missionary in English "vat is the difference between yellow and yellow?" The missionary was baffled. The member tried to clarify "one is a colour and the one is a dessert of some kind?" And the missionary twigs: yellow and Jell-O :P

Another one: a non-native English-speaker was trying to hurry somebody up by saying "hurry up, I'm boring!" (Though I must admit that the difference between boring/bored, interesting/interested etc is equally subtle in Swedish, and I recall as a greenie asking a man on the street (after telling him who we were and what we do) "are you interesting?" :P)

So of course, Swedish is equally treacherous to missionaries who are sometimes (in the beginning of their missions, but also later on) less than fluent speakers and hearers of this strange little language. And it doesn't help that the Swedes themselves often don't speak very clearly. There are plenty of very funny mistakes to make.
Such as:
-saying "I'm full" after a meal might end you up saying you are drunk ("jag är full" = "I am drunk", "jag är mätt" = "I am full (lit. fed)").
-in Swedish "to use" and "to convert" are uncomfortably close to each other - so a missionary has in the past asked to convert someone's bathroom ("får jag omvända toaletten?" = "may I convert the toilet?" - which should have been "får jag använda toaletten?" = "may I use the toilet?") Interestingly, the better Swedish expression there is to ask to borrow the toilet (which you then start to use in English after too much Swedish-exposion) :P
-the umlauts etc make a mess of many an American missionaries life. Are you talking about "promising" ("lova") or "decorating with leafy branches" ("löva")? Are you feeling "fed" ("mätt") after eating food, or are you "weak" ("matt") after eating (perhaps too much) food?
-mishearing and mispronunciating can have their own funny consequences too. One missionary asked a man at the door about his faith, and he said "I believe in science" ("jag tror i vetenskap") to which the missionary said "we believe in marriage too ("vi tror på äktenskap också") :D