According to this website, it is one of the easier languages to pick up for a native English speaker.
[https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/](https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/)
So with the mandatory Swedish language lessons, I guess she will be able to speak it alright just in time to go home when her year contract is up.
I do hope she enjoys your country.
6 comments
It depends if she is also a good learner. Have seen people with no english background pick up the language in less than a year, and others with native english but still struggles after years trying to learn.
Learn how to learn is key, IMO
Swedes are very proficient English speakers in general, so even in the beginning she’ll still be abe to communicate with people without problem. But yes, English and Swedish are both Germanic languages and there are a lot of similarities, so she should be able to pick up the language without too much trouble.
I know a person from Italy who was an exchange student at my school for a year. And he basically understood everything at the end of his time here. So I bet she’ll be able to become at least near fluent if she interacts a lot with Swedish people and uses the language on a daily basis
I hope she enjoys her stay here in Sweden!
We had an English speaking exchange student when I went to high school.
He lived with one of the teachers from school, who also had kids our age.
The teacher said that from the moment the exchange student walked through the front door, they only spoke Swedish with him and he had to figure things out.
And the end of the year the student held a speech in perfect swedish. Hardly even an accent.
But if your niece comes to a family that enjoys speaking English with her she might not have the same results.
My English speaking husband learned a lot of Swedish from using Duolingo and watching swedish shows on Netflix.
If she does SFI (Swedish For Immigrants) which is free then she’ll learn the lingo quicker and make some friends which is just as valuable. They have day and evening classes.
I went to SFI many years ago when I moved to Sweden and one of the people I met (and am still friends with over 10 years later) was an au pair.
Good luck to her
I learned it at a very young age, so it cant be that difficult.
According to [this](https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/easiest-languages-for-english-speakers-to-learn) its about as easy as it gets. It’s obviously down to the individual to learn, but I had 5 au pairs growing up (4 Germans, 1 american) and they all became conversational quite quickly.
Everyone speaks English as well, so communicating with people is very easy. At my international school barely any expat kids bothered to learn Swedish since English works so well.