#I remember in 2020 I had one Swedish song and it was no 100 haha

[linguenuvolose]

Because I love data and graphs <3 the gender of artist and language of song of my spotify top 100 the past 3 years

[andiatas]

I was tagged by @princesscatherinemiddleton to answer these questions so let's find out how much of a nerd I am!

What colour are your eyes?: Blue-grey

What instantly tells you if a person is good?: I usually have quite a good gut feeling/instinct when it comes to people, so I'm gonna say the vibe

Do you have a recurring dream?: Not anymore, but growing up I frequently dreamt about my teeth falling out - either that I could pull them out one by one or they fell out all at once & ended up choking on them... can someone tell me if this is normal? Should I be concerned for my younger self?

What is the most interesting class you have taken?: I'm gonna have to say when I was studying History A (autumn 2020), I remember having such a strong feeling of "I'm home, this is where I'm supposed to be" & I try to remind myself of that whenever I have a life crisis & feel like giving up on history for a "safer" field

How often do you find yourself daydreaming?: Way too often

Name/nickname: Saga, I don't really have a nickname... one of my friends has said that if I was a dog I would be a poodle, so she sometimes refers to me as that

Zodiac: Capricorn (Sun = Capricorn, Moon = Aquarius, Rising = Capricorn, for those who are curious)

Height: 158 cm, so around 5 feet 2 inches

Nationality: Swedish & Sámi

Favourite colour: It's a tie between forest green & light pastel colours, depending on my mood

Favourite season: I'm gonna say summer, despite all the pollen

Favourite animals: Dogs & horses

Favourite fictional characters: Oh gosh... way too many! But fictional as in book characters, I'm going to say my underappreciated girls Ginny Weasley, Susan Pevensie & Amy March. If you can't tell, I also love Sophie Beckett & Benedict Bridgerton (I know, shocker!) both as individuals but also as a couple. Honourary mentions to my boys Michael Stirling, Percy Jackson & Finnick Odair. Not gonna go into TV series or movie characters because then we would probably be here the whole day 😂

Tea, coffee or hot chocolate?: I'm addicted to coffee, so that's gonna have to be the answer but, I do love hot chocolate every now & then

Average hours of sleep?: I think somewhere between 6-7 hours

Cat or dog person?: Dog! haha

Number of blankets slept with: Duvet with one blanket on top

Places ancestors are from: The southern part of Swedish Lapland. All of my ancestors lived concentrated in an area nicknamed Drottninglandet, Queensland (the area was "discovered" & named after Frederica of Baden). So as you can see, I had no choice but to be royally obsessed!

Dream trip: Oh, I don't think I have one! I'm gonna have to say pass on this one for now

Blog established: Nov. 2012.

Random fact about yourself: I don't know how to whistle

Three ships: Well, seeing as I've already mentioned Benophie, I'm gonna go with Helnik from Six of Crows/Shadow & Bone, Bellarke from The 100 &... Shirbert from Anne of Green Gables!

Last song:

Last movie: I can't remember...

Currently reading: Scientific papers on the history of the upper-class & their country homes - no really, it's actually interesting but it's taking up all my brain power (as Ash knows seeing as I'm practically years behind on reading her stuff, sorry about that)

Currently watching: *cricket noise*

Currently craving: Sweets

Now, I'm gonna tag @death-of-astar, @silverhallow, @bridgertonbabe, @sophiamariabeckett, @grandmaster-anne & @quintessbrit plus anyone else who wants to answer these questions

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

Which Sweden wins were deserved and which ones weren’t, according to me:

1974 - Waterloo by ABBA. Deserved.

This is the reason ABBA’s career set off! And they’re amazing!

1984 - Diggiloo Diggiley by Herreys. Deserved.

I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE DIGGILOO DIGGILEY. I used to listen to this on a CD so much as a kid that the CD broke. It’s silly, it’s catchy, it’s cheesy, it’s amazing. To think, back in this day you could win by singing about something so simple as golden shoes.

1991 - Fångad av en stormvind by Carola. Deserved.

It is catchy asf and easy to dance to. I get it.

1999 - Tusen och en natt by Charlotte Nilsson (Perelli now, but Nilsson in 1999). Undeserved.

This is probably the most ”unknown” of the Sweden wins and sorry to all the Charlotte fans but i’m just not feeling it. Both my parents have said they were very surprised this even won because they weren’t that into it either. It’s not a bad song, but idk if I would call it a winning song either. But oh well, there were other tastes and standards in 1999…

But another reason is that Iceland came in second this year and if we hadn’t won, they would have gotten their first win.

2012 - Euphoria by Loreen. Deserved.

Euphoria was amazing. It’s still a song that plays and holds up.

2015 - Heroes by Måns Zelmerlöw. Both deserved and undeserved.

I was not expecting him to win in 2015 and when he did, I was very happy about it. His song was good and I think what really stood out was the effects with his little animated dude. The only problem is that his win lead us to

1. Have like 7 years of men representing us in esc, all with pretty similar songs and I can barely remember how half of them except for in the chorus. The only exception was 2020 with a trio of women, but then we didn’t have any competition. Finally in 2022 we had a woman compete again and it really felt like a bit of fresh air.

2. Insert Måns every year in esc somehow. Stop inserting him. Stop milking the man.

2023 - Tattoo by Loreen. Undeserved…?

The question mark because I don’t know how to feel. I should feel happy that we’ve won, but I did not at all feel that. Especially when it was so clear that the audience wanted someone else. It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel fair. And I think swedish media definitely makes it worse when they openly mock the others, especially Finland, over this win. They’re making us look like prudes and kind of insensitive with the things they say. It’s like not even swedish media can celebrate this because they wanna focus on the negative backlash. Like with this behavior, I think we deserve as little points as possible for at least 5-10 years so we can fucking calm down, because I’ve noticed kind of already after Måns’ win we’ve developed this hubris, and I had hoped we’d start to calm down, but now with this win I am sad to say it’s probably not gonna disappear for a longer while.

But at the same time. The song isn’t bad… and Loreen is a queen. And I gotta say, I didn’t think she’d win. First of all, she competed in our national competition in 2017 and didn’t even get to the finale, so I was unsure at first what would even be different this time. Then she won, and I thought, well, people have sent precious esc winners before. It’s never gone that well except for one time in the 80s, but that is an exception. But I guess Loreen just has that po-po-po-pooooooweer /j So seeing her win actually was a bit of a surprise. I knew she’d be popular with juries, but I really thought ”oh but the televoters will probably only give her 100 points at max”. Haha…

It’s cool that she’s the first woman to have won twice, but tbh, eventually it’s just gonna be a textbook trivia. I mean, how relevant is Johnny Logan now? Now we need other records to beat - maybe first band to win twice (Måneskin, Lordi? Maybe?), maybe first country to win with only jury/televotes because the other gave them 0? This year was also a learning year how to do it next time, or possibly a protest to change the system. Honestly, the voting system has changed so much in years, and now we at least have the power in the semi’s. Maybe it will change, maybe it will not. We’ll see.

Also as a final note: There’s a lot of songs you barely remember who have won. From 2016-2019, the only song I remember is Toy by Netta. Also, there’s gonna be so much other underserved wins in the future. Both in our national competitions to choose a representant from our country, and in esc. What happened this year has def happened before.

I’m a bit curious what next year will bring. But I do think this win was more undeserved than deserved, even if I could see why it would win too.

[aaltjelng]

so the lovely @languagessi sent me an ask with the numbers for the ask game but i managed to accidentally delete the ask:)) well, i decided to try to answer anyway, hopefully i remembered the numbers right haha... so here are the answers!

12. Vocab or grammar?

It’s a tough question! I guess it kind of depends on the language... I am utterly in love with Korean grammar! It might sound strange but I just find studying it so fascinating and rewarding. It also feels really nice to finally be learning a language that shares some traits with Finnish (no articles, a lot of suffixes...) I find studying Korean grammar a lot nicer than for example French grammar (although I do like that too!), mostly because I struggle a lot with remembering the genders of nouns and that makes me frustrated, and articles and genders feel kind of unnecessary to me as a Finnish speaker whereas the nuances that can be expressed through Korean grammar are really interesting.

I don’t have such strong opinions on vocab. In the beginning I did find it hard to remember Korean vocab and I still struggle with that a bit, but it’s getting better and better all the time. I think I like learning vocab the most when studying Swedish! I don’t know why, but I guess it just feels like it sticks more easily. I do love some Korean, especially native Korean words with all my heart... And learning vocab can feel super rewarding: that feeling when you spot a word you just learned in a random text and realize you can actually understand what it is saying is really the best feeling.

23. How did you get into languages?

Honestly I have loved languages for as long as I can remember. When my brother started learning English at school at the age of 9 (I was 7), I secretly listened to him and our mom studying. I also stole his English books and secretly read them by myself and tried to study.

After that I did have some time that I was just studying at school, I was always good at it but not as enthusiastic as I am now. It clicked in 2017 when I was 13 years old and I just started studying Swedish on my own. We had it in school too, but I was frustrated with how slow we were going. Somehow I just thought about the idea of studying and speaking this language and languages in general and it just made me really excited and happy. It is really difficult to explain but languages really bring out this certain feeling in me and that feeling has stayed with me since that year.

24. Why are you studying your target language?

So I actually have four target languages right now: French, Swedish, Italian and Korean. English is also a foreign language for me but I am not really interested in improving my English level as of now. 

Out of these four languages, I am now actively trying to improve my Korean, while the other three are more or less on “maintenance mode”. I study those three at school as well so I am still using and studying them, just not with the same intensity as Korean.

Anyway, here’s a little bit about each of these languages and why I am studying them!

French: I started it at school at the age of 9. It was quite a clear decision for me back then, I was really interested in the language, I had been to France many times and the Dutch side of my family actually originates from France (like hundreds of years ago my ancestors fled persecution from France to the Netherlands). I really loved studying French and my interest has only grown over the years. I love speaking French, I love reading French, I love listening to French and writing in French, and I really want to get my French to an advanced level. I will probably work on my French more actively next year and really try to bring it to C1 level before my matriculation exam. Now my French is somewhere between B1 and B2.

Swedish: I started it at school when I was 12 years old. In Finland Swedish is an obligatory subject so I didn’t actually choose starting it haha but I have always loved Swedish so I was motivated from the start. My aunt lives in Stockholm and I have been there for about 20 times. My mom also loves Swedish and I think she has also been a factor in my love for Swedish. As I said earlier, Swedish is actually the language that inspired me to start actively self studying languages. I just felt so frustrated with the pace we were moving at at school and I just thought to myself: “I learned English more or less fluently mostly with my own effort. Why couldn’t I do that with Swedish too?”. English I had learned because of other factors, not really my enthusiasm about the language or language learning but more because I needed to understand English in order to understand fandom things and books and bands I loved. So I thoguht that, well, books were really the thing that brought my English to a new level, so I should probably do that with Swedish. And so I did that and studied hard and got my Swedish to an intermediate level. I studied actively for about 5 months, after that I’ve just been mostly relying on school. This spring & summer I am planning on taking the next step and bringing my Swedish to an advanced level before my matriculation exam.

Italian: I started studying Italian at school last year with my best friend. She is part Italian and I thought that because I love learning languages and I love her and there is a possibility take Italian, why not take Italian? I also love Italian history and art and Italian is a very significant language in classical music (I am studying to become a classical violinist/violist). So I have been taking Italian for a bit more than a year now and I am around an A2 level. Next year, before the matriculation exam, I’d love to get my Italian to a B2 level or at least a B1 level.

Korean: In the summer 2019 I stumbled across some videos and heard my first songs by BTS. One of them: Paldogangsan or so-called “Satoori rap”. I heard it and just instantly fell in love. It’s a song about Korean dialects, and the way the rap showcased the different sounds of the Korean language... It really inspired me. Well, other things happened in my life, I got depressed, my other psychiatric and neurological issues got worse and so on. Through that time I discovered some truly amazing and touching songs that had lyrics that really moved me to my core, some by BTS but most by Agust D, and I knew I had to learn that language, at least a little bit. At first I just learned hangul to make sure that the lyrics I was scribbling to my diary weren’t complete nonsense. During the following six months I didn’t actively study Korean, I just played with Duolingo here and there, listened to a few beginner TTMIK lessons, acquired some vocabulary I was hearing in songs... 

But in May 2020 something just struck me and I just got this sudden burst of inspiration. I realized that if I really wanted to learn this language, what better time to start than now? I guess I had been feeling kind of intimidated, because I knew that learning a language, any language and especially one like Korean would take a long time. But I still remember this one post that I saw on tumblr. It said something about how usually when we think about how long learning a language will take, we feel weirded out about thinking ourselves being that much older. But the thing is, we will get older anyway. Might as well be older and know this language that you deeply love. That idea has stayed with me since. Let’s take one estimate: getting fluent in Korean will take about 4 years. In 4 years I’ll be 21. So? In 4 years I’ll be 21 anyway, why not be a 21 year old who knows Korean. And I also realized that I am still so young. I have so much time to learn so many languages. Might as well use it.

So I have been actively studying by myself for about 6 months and would place myself somewhere around the A2 level. This October I made this challenge for myself: for 100 days, study as hard as you can. Learn as much as you can and do not give up. I really want to see how far I can come if I give this my all! I’m wishing on getting to a B1 level at the end of this challenge but we’ll see. WIth Korean, and I guess with any language, it’s quite easy to get discouraged by thinking how much you still don’t know, so it’s important to also realize how much you already know. I have come so far already during these past 6 months, and I am really proud of myself. That motivates me to keep going: I learned all that, so I can learn these other things too!

Okay hahaha sorry for my very very long post and making you listen to my ramblings in my incoherent English.  I just love languages so much and I could talk about them for forever!

Thank you if you read this far, I hope you have a wonderful day. <3

Aleijd