Basic Swedish

by Ian Hinchliffe, Philip Holmes

Basic A Grammar and Workbook combines an accessible basic reference grammar and related exercises in one volume, and covers most of the topics that students might expect to deal with in their first year of learning Swedish.

Each of the 25 units discusses one or more grammar topics, with examples that are subsequently practised in the exercises that follow.

The book introduces the contemporary language against a backdrop of Swedish culture, society, geography, customs and history. Each unit ends with a cultural text that outlines an aspect of Swedish culture and exemplifies and consolidates the grammar topic examined in the unit.

Features



clear grammatical explanations with examples in Swedish and English



vocabulary based on a major corpus of written Swedish in order to guarantee authenticity and relevance



cross-references to other units



over 100 exercises with a key to all the correct answers



full vocabulary list at the end of the book.

The book is suitable both for independent study and for class use. It can be used by absolute beginners and those who have advanced a little further.

Genres: Swedish Literature, Language

194 pages, Paperback

Published March 20, 2018

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Routledge’s “Basic X: A Grammar and Workbook” and “Intermediate X: A Grammar and Workbook” together add up to about a B1 level of the language concerned, as evaluated by university courses or official state exams. They are not textbooks, and a student will need to have already worked through a textbook with dialogues in order to understand how to actually use the language in practice. Instead, each chapter only presents anew some aspect of grammar and then drills on it. Therefore, they are only complementary resources when one has already learned the language elsewhere.

This set for Swedish is quite representative of the series. The approach is more or less what I was looking for, since I learned Swedish to a B1 level during university studies in Finland, and I just wanted to ensure that I had not forgotten anything. However, the downside of the Basic Swedish volume is that there isn’t all that much here, little more than a hundred pages once one excludes the answer key and vocabulary. This and the Intermediate Swedish followup would be better value if they were sold as a single volume, and without the vocabulary list since most students will have a dictionary.

[Jorgon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is a paradox: reading a grammar book for a language that one has long been familiar with in an informal way has a potential to confuse one quite a bit. Sentences that I could build easily without a thought in the past suddenly become treacherous mazes of terminology and strange, ill-fitting parts.

And I am only partly facetious. :)

That said, an excellent introduction to Swedish to go along with a more informal study such as Colloquial language series, or something like Duolingo (which is NEVER sufficient by itself); I am working through the sequel now, and will definitely get the Comprehensive version when done.

[Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Routledge, series has been a godsend; it is a series, of books that caught my eye, on a trip during/after my freshman year, at Chicago, to the U.K. I will be picking up more books in this series, in an attempt, to understand "enough" about human language, to read, a larger number of materials, historical or modern. It is interesting to see, the world, the thoughts of humanity, over it's short history; a fraction a second of the last day, of the last month, of the last year of the "Cosmic Calendar".

[Stacie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good enough. I am calling this book finished, even though I am on page 44. This is a reference book I picked up for an online class. This book was not a good way for me to learn Swedish. Practicing real and silly sentences on duolingo was better. So the book is now on my shelf when I need a reference and no longer a series of exercises I plan to get to “someday”.