Kentfans map!

[MaddyJ]

You can add yourself on the Kenfans map, let's see where the fans are

Just click on : addition and there you go!

https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=2046690#

[dumblikeamoose]

Added myself

[MaddyJ]

Nice.
I saw Jazzpurist added himself with a couple of other European folks !!!!
Keep the pins coming

[jazzpurist]

Nice.
I saw Jazzpurist added himself with a couple of other European folks !!!!
Keep the pins coming

Herself.

Strange, but true, the standoffish bastard known as jazzpurist is female. More info here for those interested (including a rather amusing misspelling of the word gitarr that I am still wondering how I managed to write down):

http://forumet.kent.nu/showthread.php?3430-Vilka-%E4r-ni&p=1133558&viewfull=1#post1133558

(I added not only myself, but my BFF as well who is also a huge kentfan but not really the type of person who hangs out at internet forums. We have been to 7 kent gigs together and she is the best travelling companion one can wish for. Too bad I haven't known her yet when I started going to kent gigs.)

[MaddyJ]

Sorry Jazzpurist... There was one chance out of two!

Have you heard of french fans???

[MaddyJ]

Who's Evelyne that pinned herself in France?

[SirNoodle]

I've added myself (Belgium) and some friends (Belgium, Netherlands and Ukraine).

[m@rco]

Added myself.

[MaddyJ]

Are you really hungarian, Jazzpurist? Your swedish is too good to be true, hehe

[jazzpurist]

Are you really hungarian, Jazzpurist? Your swedish is too good to be true, hehe

Yes, born and raised. One of my great-great-grandmothers was Polish, but I am not aware of any other member of my family not being Hungarian. And apart from my uncle's 4 years' job contract in Russia, none of them (including me, unfortunately) ever lived abroad.

No need to exaggerate, I'm not that good, I just get by. Helt okej, helt okej.

[Fast Forward]

Yes, born and raised. One of my great-great-grandmothers was Polish, but I am not aware of any other member of my family not being Hungarian. And apart from my uncle's 4 years' job contract in Russia, none of them (including me, unfortunately) ever lived abroad.

No need to exaggerate, I'm not that good, I just get by. Helt okej, helt okej.

So how, why and when (if not because of Kent) did you decide to learn Swedish?

Cause judging from the posts I've seen from you around the forum here, one could easily take you for a Swede. Your spelling and grammatics are flawless.

[jazzpurist]

So how, why and when (if not because of Kent) did you decide to learn Swedish?

Cause judging from the posts I've seen from you around the forum here, one could easily take you for a Swede. Your spelling and grammatics are flawless.

Allright, so it seems like I managed to write my whole autobiography to answer a simple question.

I'm going to hide some of it under a spoiler and leave the tl;dr only, but I honestly didn't realise it would be this long. Anyways, feel free to ignore most of it, I don't expect anyone to read through it, I'm just posting it so I won't feel like I wasted my time writing and then not posting it.

I discovered kent on the 26th March, 2006. I know the exact date because it is on the contract with the internet provider that my parents still keep - it was my first day of having internet at home, I went on youtube and was browsing videos and stumbled upon kent. The first song I listened to was Visslaren, followed by UDA and Vinternoll2. It was at a time when I was quite bored with the music I was listening to, growing out of my rebel phase and no longer being able to identify with 80% of the punkrock songs I've been so fond of in my teenage years, and looking for something different. I started listening to bands like The Stone Roses, The Killers and Franz Ferdinand (before they started going downhill with Ulysses), but while I liked them, I felt like they were missing something. I couldn't really put my finger about what that something was, but when I heard kent the first time, I knew that they had it. I was only a casual listener for nearly a year, alternating between the 3 songs I mentioned, Kevlarsjäl and Musik non stop. I had listened to the English versions of these two once, but I didn't like them, so I went back to the Swedish ones and never looked back. There were two things putting me off kent back then. One was that after seeing a photo of the band, I somehow assumed that Sami was the singer and I couldn't really fit that image with the voice (no idea how I managed to miss the video to Vinternoll2...), so it didn't really work out for me. The other was that I had not the slightest idea what they were singing about. The latter I tried to resolve by trying to learn Swedish myself, I even recall spending my bus rides with language books, trying to get the hang of it. Let's just say it was not a success story at this point. So my failed attempt at figuring out what the songs were about put them in the background in favour of bands with readily available lyrics to decipher, in other words: English and German language indie rock.

(I am aware that there are and there were at that time translations of the songs available, but as I have been ranting about it quite a lot on this forum, I am quite peeved by translations. When I was in 9th grade, our literature teacher bought us a poem, Odi et amo, in original Latin and then 14! translations of it and then asked us to pick which we thought was the best. Everyone picked a favourite and then we asked which was the correct one. She smiled and said: all of it are correct, it's the different ways the translators interpreted the original. That has put me off translations completely. I do not want anyone for interpret for me, I want to make my own interpretation. This is less of an issue with novels where the only bad thing that can happen is that the translators does not do justice to the work. But with poems and lyrics, I prefer originals. One of the reasons I want to learn French sometime in the future, to be able to read French poetry the same way I can enjoy English, German and Swedish right now.)

During the year that passed, I moved out from home, started working, broke up with my boyfriend, finished school, so music was not the priority, but when things calmed down around me again, I started to take interest in it again. Tillbaka till samtiden came out and I got hooked right away. It is not what I consider the best kent album ever, but it was the one that got me fall in love with them. Mind, I still didn't have a clue what Jocke was going on about, but it came at the right time for me to lose myself in it. In the meantime, I got the which band member was which question straight as well. (I don't mean by this part that Sami not being as cute as Jocke was the reason that I didn't get interested right away, but the fact that I had the wrong face down to the voice and they were not in harmony, if you know what I mean?) Anyways, I made a playlist with all the kent songs available on youtube at that time, and listened to it nearly all the time when I was at home. Still not understanding more than the ocassional words, still haven't set a foot in Sweden and absolutely no clue about how, if ever, I would even get a physical CD, much less see this band live.

I started learning Swedish in 2008 and while kent was a motivation, it was not the direct reason. At that time, my workplace was offering free language courses for all the employees that needed them for their daily job. I had not worked directly with Sweden at that time (or ever since), so I had no use for the language, but there were so few people needing it, that everyone was free to apply. And I had this colleague, a girl was friends with, who was in love with a Swedish guy. So she applied to the course, but didn't want to go alone and asked me to go with her. I said yes, mainly because I still felt like I wanted to understand Jocke's lyrics. So we started a beginner course, a total of 32 hours. My friend realized in the meantime, that her love interest was not a nice guy, to put it politely (long story short, they had a short fling which ended when she found out that he was engaged to another girl and were seeing both of them at the same time), so she dropped out, but I finished the course. During this, I fell in love with the language and after the course ended, I continued studying from our course book alone. I also registered to this forum, to gather up all that was worth to know about kent, and also as a way to practice my Swedish. Tho I never dared to write anything, as I still sucked, but I read it, nearly religiously.

Next year, a new language course was offered again, but this time an intermediate one. The same issue as previously, too few takers, so anyone was welcome. We had the same teacher and she agreed to take on 3 of us from the beginner course. The rest of the group were pros compared to us: a girl who studied Swedish at university, a girl who was fluent in Norwegian and another who spent half her childhood in Sweden etc. One of ous beginners dropped out immediately, two of us hung around. It was hell. First three lessons I went home and cried, saying that I would never be able to learn Swedish at all. But I refused to give up, now motivated by kent and my love of the language. By the time the course ended, I pretty much caught up with the rest of the group. I had to put in a lot of time, I studied whole weekends, just to be able to keep up. Most of this knowledge was pretty passive tho, I haven't even talked with a real Swede at that time.

The first time I travelled to Sweden was August 2009, with a friend. I realized very quickly that I knew nada, it was really hard understanding spoken Swedish, and even worse trying to speak it, especially that I am quite shy in real life (who would have thought?). So I went home after 1.5 weeks with a heartbreak, disappointed that all my work was worth nothing - but everything that had kent written on it and was sold in Stockholm. I bought literally the whole discography and the black book we do not talk about.

I stocked up on books in Swedish on the trip and started studying with the same intensity again then I had to do at the last course. However, I had to do this on my own, as Swedish was not offered again at my workplace and I couldn't find a language course outside it, as I now exceeded the level that was usually offered. A private teacher for a small language is pretty expensive, so I decided against it, already saving up for next year, as the decision was made at that time that I wanted to see kent live, at least once.

My first concert was 27th February at Annexet, and that was when I was completely lost. Kent on CD was one thing, but kent live was Magic with capital M. I was already able to understand the lyrics, I knew most songs by heart at that time (which was most unfortunate for the people around me in the public as I really cannot sing), so there was no stopping anymore. I bought two tickets off a really nice girl here in on the fourm for next day's concert, and doubled the experience immediately. I was planning to see them twice on the summer tour as well, but my plane got rescheduled so I had to miss the concert I was planning to see in Eskilstuna, but a Swedish friend who I met when I was in Stockholm the year before, accompanied me to the concert at Långholmen. And since then I have been to at least one concert each tour.

I continued visiting Sweden, buying books, trying to find Swedish movies and series to watch. I never really found another band like kent, so they were and still are the only Swedish (language) band I listen to. (A noteable mention is Lars Winnerbäck tho, who I saw live at Tele2 Arena and have liked since then, but I still prefer him live and hardly listen to his songs otherwise.) Suffice to say, I didn't really make much progress in my Swedish.

I started going to a course again in 2014, when I was suffering from a burnout and my doctor advised me to pick up a regular hobby, something I enjoy doing. So I decided to pursue learning Swedish again, and found a group that was advanced level. This was not a course with a set number of hours, which was an advantage, as it was regular and stable, but also the disadvantage that it had no set goals. So instead of an active course, imagine a group of people who got together once a week to practice Swedish. Also, it was a really unequal group, with people who have lived or studied in Sweden for years and others who just 'graduated' up to the level without any depth of knowledge. I can't say I learned much there, but I liked the people and it was my only opportunity to speak Swedish with someone, so I kept going for nearly a year.

In the meantime, there was another language school that offered a high level course, and I applied, mostly for testing out if I could get in or not. It was pretty expensive, especially that it was only 3 of us in the group, but the teacher was a native speaker, the small group gave many opportunities to speak and improve individually. It ended in March, so I am currently not studying anywhere, but there are plans to continue in the autumn after the summer holidays are over.

Given that I had not have much formal education and most of what I know with the exception of the basics, is self-learned, I do not really have a feel for how good or not I am in Swedish. I often feel insecure and as there is no feedback, I quite honestly do not think I'm really good. I have done a lot of reading and writing, so I guess I get by in writing. I understand spoken Swedish pretty well, I can even get my head around a broad dialect after listening to it for 10-15 minutes first and have a feel for the different pronunciation. But I've had very little chance to speak Swedish, so the spoken part is my weakness. I speak pretty slowly, often can't find the words and have to rephrase what I'm trying to say, my pronunciation sucks (honestly), and my grammar is not that much spot-on as when I have the time to formulate myself. I have spoken with 3 members of this forum, they can testify about (the lack of) my proficiency, if they feel like it.

So thank you very much for your nice words, I really appreciate it, but I don't feel like I deserve it, I still have a lot to learn and practice to get to the level I want reach to be able to say that I am good in Swedish.

[SirNoodle]

What a great story (yes, I've read it completely, with all spoilers). And what great stamina to learn Swedish. I can recognise various elements from your Kent-discovery journey, and I once played with the idea of learning Swedish as well, but I simply could not put the effort into it. I only know bits and phrases, reading only, and I get by with translations of lyrics to get a feeling for the lyrics. And for the rest I just focus mostly on the music and consider Jokke's voice as 1 of the instruments.

I read your Swedish message in the sports topic, about being proud as a Hungarian (I'm Belgium, we were the other team in that lovely game, we build big expectations on that and typically Belgian, we destroyed those expectations immediately in the following match against Wales). And that looked very Swedish to me, the google translate worked perfectly on it to understand it

Anyway: I'm just really amazed and in admiration on the effort you've put into learning Swedish.

[Fast Forward]

Amazing story! You have an admirable stamina and patience to learn Swedish, it seems - very impressive! And I stand by my earlier statement; I looked through some of your posts written in Swedish (just out of curiosity) and it can easily pass as written by any native Swede.

I understand of course that it is easier in writing, when you have the time and resources to verify that everything is correct before posting it. But still, very impressive! Grammatically there aren't many errors, only detail I could notice though is that maybe some phrases/expressions here and there are a bit complicated/long. But mastering that is something I guess you can only learn by time and experience (such as being raised with the language for example).

If I look at a lot of people here in Sweden, most of them younger (I should add - I'm in my mid-20's), there are far more errors and mistakes in their writing than in yours. I've always been good with languages in school (not that I have found it very interesting, I guess I just happen to be good at it), and I also studied a year at the university here. There I found very few who could actually write a really decent text without a shitload of errors and mistakes. It surprised me, as I don't understand how the knowledge of one's own native language can be so low, and seem to have deteriorated so much just over these past few years. I felt it was honestly quite emabarrassing to see people master their own language so poorly in such an educated place as the university...

Anyway, my rant about my fellow Swedes and their poor language skills is over (I suspect my grammar nazism won't be, though)!

Just keep practicing and speaking (when you get the chance) and I'm sure you'll master your Swedish gallantly!

[Kurvitz]

@Jazzpurist, you mentioned "the black book we do not talk about." What is that?

(Nice story too, thanks.)