Uppsala Universitet (UU)

I wanted to learn Swedish. BUT people speak english perfectly and if you tried to speak swedish they lose patience very fast. After if you spoke Swedish people started to see you not as a respectful EU citizen but as a dangerous possible emigrant. They dont appreciate very much the fact you want to learn their language. They see that as a threat, "another foreigner to support within our welfare state" they don t realize you can be very profitable for their economy and society. Unfortunately If you despise swedish as an useless language (only spoken by 9 milion people) they respect you more, In my opinon swedish society is fed up of receiving emigrants from the most distant countries as Iran, chile, Bosnia. Swedish are good people and very open and inocent, they always believe whatever you tell them, they never lie, I like very much this facet of Sweish. Just because this culture and behaviour Swedish had deceived by emigrants and in one way I understand why they look suspiciously to foreingers, they are good but not stupid. Now I m learning swedish for my own, because in spite of everything I like Sweden, Swedish and Swedish language. I regret not to have taken advantage of my situation when I was there. BUT IT WAS TERRIBLY DIFFICULT, and by the way at this time I was not very proficient not even in English so taking 2 languages at the same time was crazy. Anyway it is a shame for the swedish language but my overall communication was OK. Though I would have liked to speak in Swedish with some people I met I could not. But I m sure I WILL

The worst thing was that my Swedish did not improve very dramatically, which I was hoping for it to do. Everyone there speaks amazing English and it was more frustrating for them to listen to me try to formulate a sentence in Swedish than it was for them to just speak in my own language. Anything to do with the university was no problem where language was concerned, but dealing with banks and other institutional organisations sometimes proved to be a little difficult.

This was an excellent experience for me, but bear in mind that Swedish was one of my majors at my home University. I believe other Exchange Students might not have enjoyed the social scene as much as I did, due to the language factor. But Swedes in general have an excellent ability to speak English. They are open and friendly to people from other cultures (especially Australia and New Zealand), and I struggle to believe anyone from anywhere couldn't live, cope and enjoy themselves there.

Very positive comment! I had the opportunity to speal avery day English with people coming from all around the world and to study a new language (Swedish). The lessons, the study and the groupwork allowed me to get confindent with lots of Business words and phrases. Furthermore, the presentations: each group had to present each own work and results to the class and it was a very challenging experience ('cause it was the first time I've done it..and I've done it in English).

I would highly recommend that people make the effort to learn Swedish, it can seriously improve your experience and Swedish people will really appreciate it. For non native English speakers, I would suggest that you read a few books in English before the beginning of the courses. You will be surprised to see that it's really hard to memorize things in another language so don't be mislead by your understanding ability, assimilation requires another language level.

English is the course of instruction. It was already my native language so I did not choose Uppsala for that purpose. I did take a Swedish language course, and if you know English and have even basic notions of German, it is a fairly simple language to pick up. The good thing is that once you pick up Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are very similar. Do not count on locals to speak Swedish with you, everyone speaks English including the bus drivers.