Native Swedish speakers
I have just started to learn Swedish off this site but would like to communicate with some native Swedes to assist in my learning. Can anyone help me please? Thanks
17 Comments
I would suggest mylanguageexchange.com. That's where I find native partners to speak to. It's 12 dollars for like three months to be able to initiate contact, but you can send free "hi"s, and conversationexchange.com or something is free. I just prefer the former because I feel that if some people need to pay then they are more dedicated.
Can you talk a little more about this? How has it worked for you? Have you found people to communicate with? What kinds of "language exchanges" have you done? (i.e. have you done speaking exchanges?) How hard has it been to set up? How often have you had a chance to do it? Do there seem to be a lot of people eager to participate? (I'm asking because once, a long time ago, I signed up to do some kind of pen pal exchange (also to learn Swedish), but never found anyone who wanted to do it.) Thanks.
Sure. First, some of this may have to do with me being young. I can't say from experience. The first time I signed up, I was a free member on both sites and learning German. I had no picture. A German we'll call Alice initiated contact on mylanguageexchange, and out of six or seven emails I sent on conversationexchange, I think I got one reply back from Mary. I talked to both of them via email briefly, and then google chat, and then moved to Whatsapp after a few months. It's been 6 months or so, and I'm still talking to both of them via Whatsapp every few days (it was every day for a while). One is a translator (there seem to be lots of those in Europe) and is just happy to help with my German, and the other is not quite fluent in English, so we speak both languages about the same amount of time. I also met somebody else, but he was on Skype and I forgot to reinstall Skype after a reinstall of my system. After I started with Swedish, I got back on mylanguageexchange (about a month ago). For German, I had finished the tree when I sought out language partners - for Swedish, I couldn't string a sentence together yet. This time I was on mylanguageexchange.com and had a gold membership and a profile picture. I got a couple dozen "Hi"s from free members, and I sent a few emails myself. Of the "Hi"s I got, I speak to two Germans on Gmail every few days and one French person on another email that I need to log into more often. I also sent an email to a Swedish girl, and we jumped immediately to text on Skype. She's really nice, and tolerated my complete ineptitude at Swedish for the first few weeks (I think I got lucky). We spoke almost all English at the beginning. Germans seem to not want to do a Skype call, but I did a Skype call with the Swedish girl to work on pronunciation. As I get better, I'm sure she'll be willing to Skype call to speak Swedish. Also, I use the search feature on the sites - maybe that helps too. Hope this helped.
No. I have been a gold member a few times, but am not right now. Why do you ask?
I've tried so many sites, but I could not find any penpals. In this site I found someone, but both we are regular membership. I'm from Iran and I can't pay for membership and I can't get in touch with her :(((((
This site seems REALLY sketchy at first but its actually the only place I could find Swedish people so... http://www.interpals.net/account.php
I agree about the very sketchy nature of interpals :). People were very nice though, and there were tons of people.
It's so weird because half of the pictures are super provocative and it's like "Interested in: Relationships, dating, love" and I'm just like "Um hi, can you help me learn Swedish please? I don't want to date you but I need help" and after like 20 tries I usually get at least one person.
Hahaha "love". Was it that hard to find Swedish people on there? I found sooooo many German and French people it was insane.
Well, I sent a lengthy message to about 25 explaining my situation. I heard back from 7 or 8, but only 2 added me on Facebook (one is inactive) and one added me on kik. So I basically only have 2.
Swedish people are somewhat shy, I feel.
Ah. I never tried to move from interpals to anything else. Usually my progression on the other sites though is to gmail, then to gmail talk, then to Skype or Whatsapp.
chat.iw ignore the perverts, scroll down in the flags on the side untill you see the swedish flag, initiate contact.
