Writing Swenglish

Today I attended the Monday morning writing session. Last Friday, I joined a one-day boot camp for PhD thesis writing. Having been officially enrolled for only two weeks, I really have little to write about. In contrast, at the end of the day in my little office, I struggle to stop reading, researching, thinking, and writing.

I confess, I still do most of my writing in Swinglish. However, that is a huge step in the right direction. The mere thought of switching to write in English used to freak me out. Ever since I started learning as a child, letters seemed to hide and swap places with each other—making reading and writing in Swedish a struggle, and foreign languages even worse. Yet my love of telling stories helped me find strategies to overcome that hardship—at least in Swedish. Over time, I developed a personal tone and even began working for a local newspaper.

Proud of my accomplishments, I promised myself to stick to Swedish. Why should I force myself to go through the struggle to conquer the letters of another language?

But here I am, writing a dissertation (thesis in New Zealand, avhandling in Swedish) in English. There’s no turning back now. So I practice—that’s what I do. I allow myself to write poorly, to use Swenglish without judgment, and I hope to get good enough along the way. Writing this blog is part of that practice, so thanks for reading!