How Do Swedes Treat Foreigners?

Yesterday I got the following letter from someone who asked me some questions I think many of you may be interested in hearing the answers to…

Hi there,

How are you ?
My name is R, I’ve just started learning Swedish and your videos have been helping a lot.
It’s so true when you say that it’s very difficult to find material to learn Swedish, but your videos are amazing dude.

I’ve always had this passion for languages, but I’m half Brazilian/Japanese, I’ve been living in Tokyo for 6 years so I speak English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese and I want Swedish to be the next !

I was thinking to go to Sweden, try to find find a Job there.

How is the life there ?
Is it difficult to set up yourself there ?
How do they treat immigrants ?
I’d be very thankful if you could give me some tips about the country dude.

You are doing an amazing job with your videos, congratulations !
I’m so looking forward to hearing from you.

best regards

R

And here was my response….

Hej R!

Thanks for watching!

Have you signed up for my newsletter yet? Better yet, if you are really serious about learning Swedish, you need go to my website and check out the 24-Week course . Seriously, it’s the best course available and I get fan mail everyday from people thanking me for changing their lives with the program.

So your first step is to sign up for the mailing list. It’s free and I explain MANY things about the Swedish and what it is like living in the country. You can go to my blog and read all the old newsletters to catch up. You will learn A LOT about Sweden and Swedes from reading it.

Your second step is to purchase the 24-Week course . It’s really cheap and it will take you from zero to fluent in 6 months or less if you follow the guidelines given to you in the program.

Your third step is to get online and start making Swedish friends on skype, etc so you can chat and videochat in Swedish. Just don’t ask Swedes about their own culture. They can’t see the forest from the trees. Ask foreigners who have been living here for a while…like me!

Getting set up here can be tricky. It helps to know someone in Sweden, or many people if you can manage it. That’s another great reason for making Swedish friends online. Not only to you improve your fluency in the language but you can make valuable business connections. If you read my “About Me” page, then you will know that I knew a lot of Swedes when I got here, so I had some connections and places to sleep. I registered my own swedish company and started working really hard to get it going so I could put food on the table and build my own life here. Things are going pretty good today, but it definitely wasn’t easy. There was a great deal of struggle involved.

Your struggle will be completely different than mine, but if you wanna survive in Sweden then you need to start making swedish connections before you get here. Make as many as you can and try to make some really tight ones too with people who honestly understand and admire your vision.

Foreigners get treated differently depending on where they come from. I will tell you however, that if you are fluent in the language, then you usually get treated pretty good as foreigner. Being half Brazilian/Japanese, you will get treated very well. It might take you a while to adapt to the swedish culture, but you will not have to put up with a lot of the hatred that I have had to put up with when I first got here because I came from America.

It is very trendy for Europeans in general to hate Americans and America these days, so when I first got here, most people treated me with a very bad attitude. Many Swedes think that they know everything about America even though they don’t. They think Americans are all fat, uneducated religious fanatics who want to drop bombs for Jesus. Either that or they think that they are rich and pompous airheads.

Sweden watches more American movies than Swedish movies. They imitate all of America’s TV shows, import American restaurants, clothing stores etc, and 90% of Swedish rock bands try and sing in English. Yet, these same Swedes are constantly talking sh#t about America and Americans. It’s really peculiar and at times rather annoying.

I think deep down Swedes tend to have a love/hate relationship with America. They love american culture, but at the same time they are a little envious. It’s the classic example of building up an idol so you can tear it down. The same thing happens to movie stars. The media builds celebrities only to take them down later. It’s how the economy goes around. You can’t judge American by what the european media shows on TV.

Anyways, by getting my Swedish good enough so that I sounded like a Swede, I have gotten Swedes to treat me like a normal Swede. Now, when they do find out that I am an American, all their prejudices and misconceptions gets flushed down the toilet and they are left with no choice but respect me like a normal human being. Actually, they usually even respect me a little bit more than usual for having been able to transcend their expectations in a humble fashion. At this point, being an American starts working to my advantage because now I have become something exotic. It’s like I’m a Swede with “an edge”, if you know what I mean.

So don’t worry. You shouldn’t have any problems other than a little culture shock in the beginning. Again, read my blog for more details and write me back with any other questions. But if you really want to feel at home here in Sweden, then you MUST get fluent in the language. The absolute fastest and most efficient way of doing that is through the Find Your Flow program available at www.speakswedishstupid.com !

Good luck and best wishes

Prof Paul

P.S. There are a small percentage of swedish nationalists here who are concerned over the extremely high numbers of moslems flooding Sweden every year, but this obviously does not concern you (At least I don’t think so. I don’t think I ever met someone from Japan or Brazil who was moslem.). I just thought I would mention that so you would know, but even so, most Swedes show tolerance towards moslems.

So I hope this letter was a good start in answering some of the questions many of you may have in regard to living in Sweden as foreigner. Please feel free to write me if yo have any other questions.

Lycka Till!

Prof Paul

Tagged As: Learn Swedish, Speaks Swedish, Swedish Language