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“Your Son is in The Babysitter” An Examination of Some Semantic Issues Faced by Swedish Learners of English Jennifer Brook Abstract Transfer errors by Swedish learners of English were examined with respect to their effect on semantic meaning. The his- torical and contemporary relationship between the Swedish and English languages makes many aspects of English, such as the use of the Latin alphabet and S-V-O syntactic structure, easier to acquire for native Swedish speakers; however, studies of Swedish learners of English have shown that use of the gerund in English as well as issues with modal verbs can cause semantic issues, which can impede the learner’s intended meaning. Additionally, “false friends” between Swedish and Eng- lish such as gift, glass, and blank, can cause further interference and difficulties for the learner. Finally, teaching suggestions are also presented in order to assist Swedes learning English to avoid the negative interference of their first language in their second language use. Introduction ish and English before addressing recurrent As an official language of both the Kingdom issues related to the use of the gerund and of Sweden and the Republic of Finland, modal verbs, along with errors caused by Swedish is the mother tongue of more than “false friends,” that can cause great difficulties ten million people worldwide (Lewis, 2009). to native Swedish speakers who are attempt- An Indo-European language, Swedish has ing to learn English. Additionally, this paper been historically influenced by migration, for- will offer teaching strategies that an ESL edu- eign interests and conquests much like many cator may employ to assist his or her Swedish of the world’s languages, continuing, to a cer- L1 students. tain extent, even after it was formalized in 1906 (Haugen, 1982, p. 201). In fact, the The Historical Background of the Swedish language shares many common his- Swedish and English Languages torical linguistic influences with English as As previously mentioned, Swedish has histori- both languages were shaped by Old Norse, cally been influenced by several other lan- Latin and other Germanic languages. Since guages. It was weaned from its Old Norse, the middle of the twentieth century, this trend runic orthography when Christian missionar- has shifted as English now directly influences ies arrived in Scandinavia at the end of the Swedish vocabulary, idioms, and expressions Viking Age (AD 750-1050) using the Latin through literature, media and a variety of alphabet. At that time, Latin loan words such other forms. However, despite the numerous as kondoleans or condolence (from the Latin similarities and frequent interaction between doleō, to grieve) were incorporated into the Swedish and English, there are also many dif- Swedish language (Haugen, 2009). Swedish ferences between the two languages; some- was then further influenced by both German times it is the subtle differences that may and Dutch immigrants and merchants with cause difficulties for Swedish learners of Eng- the rise of the Hanseatic League during the lish as a second language. These difficulties early 14th century. In turn, English was heavily result in semantic misinterpretations which influenced by Old Norse, the ancestral lan- cause confusion and frustration for both guage of modern Swedish, during the Viking Swedish learners of English and their in- conquests. Additionally, like Swedish, English tended audience. In order to understand this was influenced by Latin and other Germanic difficulty better, this paper will first investigate languages throughout its history. As a result the close historical connection between Swed- the two languages are closely related as both ____________________ Brook, J. (2010). “Your son is in the babysitter”: An examination of some semantic issues faced by Swedish learners of English. Hawaii Pacific University TESOL Working Paper Series 8 (1, 2), 25-32. Publication’s website: http://www.hpu.edu/index.cfm?contentID=8064&siteID=1 are considered Germanic, even though Swed- inger (1968), the use of the infinitive form in ish belongs to the Northern-East branch, the place of gerunds can cause semantic issues while English is in the West branch (Pyles & because while gerunds describe “events that Algeo, 1993). In fact, some linguists and edu- are ‘vivid, real and fulfilled,” infinitives “tend cators believe that because Swedish and Eng- to depict events that are “hypothetical, future lish are so closely related in many respects, and unfulfilled” (as cited in Celce-Muricia & including their common syntax and phonol- Larsen-Freeman, p. 648). Consider this exam- ogy, English should be “relatively easy for ple from Davidsen-Nielsen and Harder Scandinavians to learn” (Davidsen-Nielsen & (2001): Harder, 2002, p. 21). (1) *I must really stop to smoke. In addition to the many linguistic com- Jag måste verkligen sluta att röka. monalities, the ease of learning English as a (I really must stop smoking.)1 foreign language in Sweden has been further (p. 31) expedited by the fact that, since World War II, In this example, one may believe that the sur- English has been the most widely taught lan- face meaning with the use of the infinitive is guage in mellanstadium (middle schools) and that the speaker wants to stop to smoke, or in gymnasium (high schools). Swedes have also other words, he or she will stop doing an ac- witnessed an explosion in the amount of their tivity (e.g., working, driving) in order to have a exposure to English through popular culture cigarette, an action that is not yet fulfilled, in and business in the past thirty years, marking Bolinger’s sense. However, if one understands the first consistent interaction between the that the speaker in this case is a native Swed- two languages since the Viking age (Haugen, ish speaker who is not familiar with gerunds, 1982, p. 203). As such, most Swedes have one will notice that they have used the infini- picked up basic English vocabulary and tive form, which is acceptable in Swedish for phrases even without formal English instruc- the gerundic meaning. The student really tion. For example, Swedish and English share meant to refer to smoking as a fulfilled action: I many cognates, such as potatis, tiger, and choklad, really must stop smoking. due to their common history and etymology. This example could also illustrate Cor- Other similarities of note include the fact that der’s (1971) notion of a covert error, which is both Swedish and English are SVO (subject- characterized as an error in language that verb-object order) languages, both use only seems correct on the structural level yet does nominative and genitive cases, and pre- not reflect the learner’s intended meaning. positioned attributive adjectives. Additionally, Covert errors are evident in several instances a Swedish learner does not have to learn a of utterances produced by Swedish learners of new orthography as both languages utilize the English (p. 59). For example, consider the fol- Latin alphabet. In sum, English and Swedish lowing example of a covert error gleaned are more closely related than many of the from Linnarud’s (1986) study of Swedish other Indo-European languages. learners of English, which may occur due to the transfer of infinitives where a gerund is Semantic Issues Faced by Swedish necessary: Learners of English (2) *I did forget to buy the fruits. Gerunds Jag glömde att handla frukt. A specific area that may cause confusion for (I forgot buying the fruit.) Swedish learners of English is learning to use (p. 101) the gerund. A gerund, which has been defined as a verbal that ends in –ing form and func- In this case, the Swedish learner of English tions as a noun, does not occur in the Swedish has used an infinitive form, which has not language (Davidsen-Nielsen & Harder, 2001). made the sentence itself ungrammatical. Since Swedes are not familiar with the gerund, However, within the context of the student’s they tend to use an infinitive form in its place story, the semantic intention of the sentence in all cases, even if it causes the meaning of has been lost because the student was not the sentence to be altered. According to Bol- aware of the meaning of the gerund. While 26 the produced sentence means that the speaker in conversation, but it also attracts students’ did not buy the fruit (the infinitive indicates interest by using authentic material. an unfulfilled action), the intended meaning of A more advanced task can involve using a the sentence was in fact that the speaker re- game. The teacher can take a soft, inflatable called going to the store but did not recall beach ball and tape different verbs all over it. buying the fruit (the use of a gerund, I forgot For this activity, students are asked to form a buying the fruit, would indicate that “buying” is circle in the middle of the classroom. As the a fulfilled action). ball is tossed to each student, they must read With this information in mind, there are aloud the verb that is closest to their left several ways that one may approach teaching thumb as they catch it. The student is to then Swedish learners of English how to correctly create a sentence utilizing the correct form of use the gerund, while also differentiating it the verb, whether it is a gerund or an infinitive from the present progressive and infinitive or if it is a verb that can take on both forms. form. According to Folse (2009), most Eng- The student then tosses the ball on to another lish language learners will learn the present student who will then briefly explain, or para- progressive first and thus may falsely assume phrase, the meaning of the previous student’s that they already know what a gerund is when sentence(s).

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