Learning swedish.

Just a reminder that EC has a monolingual policy (to simplify moderating)

 

You'll want to learn across a variety of mediums. Duolingo is one of the best free mediums for learning another language, but like all mediums, you can't learn through just one alone. I find I get the best out of Duolingo when I attain the gold bubble thing before moving on to the next bubble. Then of course reviewing it whenever Duolingo says it'g gone rusty.
A great way to learn another language for free is finding a conversation exchange partner. A person who teachers you their native language in exchange for you teaching your native English. You can possibly find a native speaker of Swedish, or any other language, through conversationexchange.com. I've tried this with other languages, and it usually works pretty smoothly. You mainly need a stable internet connection to skype video call, and be willing to video chat at very odd hours because of time zone differences. Keep in mind that because English is so widely used as the lingua franca of the world, most language exchange partners are going to have a better grasp of English than you of Swedish. In fact, Sweden is one of the best countries in the world at speaking English as a second language. Don't worry though, it makes it easier for you. What I find with just about every conversation exchange partner I skype with is they usually want to speak English as good as a native speaker, and you clear up any subtleties they are confused about, in exchange for them teaching you the basics. So, just be nice, friendly, and willing to meet them at their time.
Outside of that, I'd also suggest listening to your target language whenever you can. YouTube is great for this. I'm sure you can find plenty of Swedish videos out there. Swedish TV shows, movies, and cartoons with English subtitles is great. Once again, I can't stress how important it is to learn through a variety of mediums. I see plenty of people online trying to learn Japanese through just anime (you know, "weeaboos," "weebs"). They never success. However, the weebs that actually put effort in to learn Japanese through different sources (which, in my opinion, is a heck of a lot easier than constantly trying to decipher), who combine that with watching anime with subs instead of dubbed, learn a lot better and a lot faster. So, I'm sure there are plenty of interesting Swedish shows, but even if you are watching a really boring, dull, Swedish sitcom that isn't your fancy, you'll find it exciting listening to it, keeping your ears peeled for words you already learned.
I'd also suggest Anki for memorizing phrases and vocab. I know people always say you don't learn through memorizing, but let's face it, we kind of do. The best part about Anki is so many people have already created decks for you for free. I'm a person who normally prefers paper flashcards to electronic ones, but Anki is almost magical in the way it shuffles the deck.
That's all I can think of for free mediums for learning different languages. Try your library, both local and school, if you're a student. Usually college libraries of schools that teach foreign languages have good selections of material, but local libraries do to. Pimsleur, a very, very, very, expensive language learning set, is sometimes available for free at a library. Check with the librarian. If it isn't available at the library, they can sometimes borrow it from another library that has it available. With Pimsleur, you just listen and repeat aloud. I know that sounds boring but believe me, it works magic. It's super expensive, and I think with Swedish it might only be a month long course, so I'd only suggest it if you can get it for free from the library.

In a nutshell - conversationexchange.com, anki, library, Swedish shows & movies wherever you can find them

 

Swedish is considered one of the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn. Similar sentence structure to English, with less irregularities. Because it's a Germanic language like English, it shares alot of cognates with English.

Biggest thing I can offer is try to talk to as many people as you can who speak the language natively. It's like we tell musicians (is actually very similar): I can teach you the technical nuisances. I can teach you to perfectly replicate what's on the page. That's easy — I mean seriously that's easy as eating pie. But the flow and where the music really happens, that's all you. You have to find how're you're going to produce that ink on a page in a real life situation.

Which is generally where slang comes in (in music theory we call it performer's edits) and things. Yes, there's a difference between "How are you doing today?" And 'How're ya doing?' It's all about the flow and the feel. Software, teachers, etc are all going to teach you the by the book version. It's when you talk to real people you learn how to make it flow. Believe it or not, music is very very similar to learning other languages. Yes there is the printed what they want you do version, and there's the "yeah we're not doing that but we are doing this version". Only difference is we musicians don't have someone ask us well what does that mean — we have the benefit of the stage.