Pronunciation

You know to pronounce the letters, A-Z perfectly, as in English; you can push your ‘P’s and roll your ‘R’s and sound like native speakers of English, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can read and pronounce everything written in Swedish with your English knowledge. Remember, you are in Sweden and the Queen of Sweden speaks Swedish.

Knowing few letters and the way they are pronounced, will be very helpful in spelling names of places and people. The most pleasing sound to hear, is someone calling you by your name, exactly the way you pronounce your name. Swedish language has few extra vowels with one or two tittles over ‘a’ and ‘o’ them, lets not try to understand them now.

Lets see how the name of the place ‘Karlberg’ is pronounced. Its simply ‘Karlby’, as in English. So remember anywhere you see ‘Berg’ replace it ‘By’. It applies to a lot of Swedish last names, like Dahlberg, Edberg, and Nyberg etc. Now pronouncing Nyberg is tricky again, ‘y’ is a vowel in Swedish and it is used like ‘i’ in English, So its ‘Niby’ or ‘Knee + by’. This applies to name of the places as well, ‘Vallingby’ is ‘Valling + B’. Confusing?!!! ;)

Don’t think ‘Peater’ is your new teammate, because it might still refer to your old friend ‘Peter’. If same letters appear twice consequently, You will find people stressing both of them, like ‘Henning’ is ‘Hen + ning’, similarly ‘An + na’, ‘Em + ma’ etc. Don’t consciously make a effort to pause to prounce the letters, it will sound stupid. J

Another important candidate is the letter ‘K’. It sounds like ‘S’ when followed by the vowels ‘i’, ‘y’. ‘a’ with dots on it (I don’t have that letter in my laptop keypad). The tube station ‘Kista’ is ‘Shista’ and ‘Skarholmen’ is ‘Sharholmen’. Church in Swedish is ‘Kyrka’, which is pronounced as ‘Shirka’ as in English.

When I have to ask for directions, I say ‘How do I go to Karlberg (pause for a moment and quickly) Karlby!’ because sometimes people do not expect a foreigner to pronounce it correctly.

Having said this, I still wonder what the lady voice in the underground train announces, when I arrive at ‘Medborgarplatsen’. I am pretty sure that its not ‘Med + Bor + Gar + Platsen’. Hope I get to pronounce it correctly very soon J…….

Pronunciation

Tryst with Tyresta

I had spent a lot of my weekends and public holidays not doing much at all. And the words I used to describe them were lazing, relaxing, sleeping, easing etc. While thinking of options to break this monotony, Hiking, was the first that came to my mind. As a result the following plan was made, rather a simple one:

Where to go: Tyresta National Park

When: 31.12.2008

Time: 8:00 to 17:00 hrs tentative

I reached Svartbacken, at around 10AM, this place is around 3 Km from the entrance to the national park. There are buses that go to the park but I had to wait for another half an hour, so decided to walk.

After reaching Tyresta By (Village) and checking out some information boards, at 10:30 AM, I took the trail following the ‘inverted orange triangle’ marking on the trees. This orange triangle was a common symbol, back home in India, which was used in population control awareness campaign (See picture).

This trail leads to Stensjödal(Another entrance to the National park) from Tyresta By. The trail is also marked in green and white strips as it is a common path which forms half of Bylsjöslingan (Name of a trail).

I would say that, his trail was easy, and it was a leisure walk with occasional ice sheets on the way, which could give you a few shocks if you put you foot carelessly on them. It went through the forest with pine trees all around. The whole atmosphere was calm, clean and serene. I walked taking my own sweet time, enjoying the freshness of the woods. After hiking for around 3.5 Km, I reached a junction at 11:00 from where the trail diverts towards Stensjon Lake in one direction at 2.5 Km and in the other direction, Bylsjöslingan continued with its green and white stripes which would lead to Tyresta By.

Just after walking in to the forests towards Stensjon, was the most surprising part of the hike. It was the area of the forest that was destroyed by a massive forest fire during the summer of 1999. I have never seen a charred forest in my life, though it was a unique experience, it was not pleasant feeling observing the destruction caused by fire. There was hardly any greenery and it was vast open land, profusely covered with logs of the fallen trees and which in turn is covered with ice. The ice over the tree trunks looked like bright white flowers, which will never wither away rather melt away.

This part of the forest was little difficult mainly due to the ice covered areas which make it slippery. I got off the track, as few of the orange triangles were hidden under snow. Remember that if you are walking over a slightly rugged path, you are little off the route, as the trail is not difficult. If at all there are some ups and down or rough patches, there will wooden steps and planks to make it easy. As the area affect by fire comes to an end, the green woods starts approaching. Few meters within the woods there was a tiny wooden bridge over a frozen stream. This should have been the water flowing from the edges of the Lake Stensjon.

I trek for about 10 minutes took me to the Lake Stensjon. It was a beautiful site on a bright day with blue skies and crisp air; it can’t be anything better than this. The frozen lake was shining like a huge mirror reflecting the mild Swedish winter sun rays. It was here for the first time after entering the fire hit forest I saw 3 humans, we had a little chat and they guided me to Fornborg, which was supposed to be an ancient castle. The man was kind enough to give me a map and enquired if I knew about light fading away by 3:00 PM as it was 1:00 PM by then.

Don’t have high expectations about this castle and imagine drawbridges, battlement, canons etc, I had to search for the castle for a while, and soon I realised that it’s just a bunch of rocks. Tyresta never ceases to surprise you. After a few hours of hiking, I was hungry and decided to have my lunch with a view. It was at the cliff over looking the bright lake, I had the sandwich I picked from Pressbyran and relaxed for couple of minutes before, starting to Tyresta By at 1:30 PM. I did the return at a brisk pace, following the same route except towards the end took the other half of the Bylsjöslingan, which passed by Bylsjon Lake, where few peoplewere found skating on the lake. At 3:00 PM I reached Tyresta and took the SL bus and headed back to Stockholm.

While travelling in the bus, I already started thinking about hiking the trail Kustleden in the National park which goes along the Baltic Sea……

Tryst with Tyresta