Tips/Secrets
LiveJournal
Join LiveJournal and become a member in communities like: learn_swedish, americans_abroad, linguaphiles, and daily_swedish.
You can post any questions you have to communities like this, and you're likely to get a reply within the half-hour! There are a lot of people connected through communities like this and you get pretty high quality answers, since most of the people responding are native Swedes, native speakers, or just highly skilled.
How much do I recommend this? Big-much.
Swedish Spell-checker (firefox)
If any of you use firefox and would like a Swedish spell-checker for your web browser, you should download this add-on:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3064
disclaimer: this add on is not very good with compound words.
Swedish language keyboard setting (pc)
If you have a pc and would like to have the Swedish characters å, ä, and ö built onto your keyboard settings, gör så här...
start --> control panel --> regional and language options --> languages --> details --> add...
then, add "Swedish" as an Input language and as a Keyboard layout/IME.
So, now...
å replaces the forward bracket [ and curly-brace {
ä replaces the double-quotes " and single quotes '
ö replace the colon: and semicolon ;
All the regular letters är detsamma, men det finns några finicky things like the question mark is moved to shift+dash. The parentheses are shifted a space to the left and the shift+number symbols are just a bit different i allmänhet. Also, I can't find the @ sign.
To toggle from English to Swedish, press shift+alt. That's all there is to it.
swedish lexin
lexin
Great online Swedish-English, English-Swedish dictionary. Specifically targets immigrant education. Currently contains about 30,000 words.
tyda.se
tyda.se
When the lexin just isn't enough, this is a great site! It has a much larger word base than the lexin from Språkrådet. It also handles longer phrases sometimes. Beware, some translations är inte så bra, but for the most part, you should be able to tell which ones are bad. Check it against the lexin if you are unsure.
"Tyda.se är en sajt som bl.a. hjälper dig att översätta ord och uttryck mellan engelska och svenska (och tvärtom). Den är till för alla och den är gratis."
Has 1.5 million words!
Using google for swedish
Use boolean operators! + - " " .. ~
The most helpful is the "double quotes." With double quotes, Google will search throughout the internet for the phrase you type within it exactly as spelled. This is a great spell/grammar check for writing essays. Pay attention to how many search results you find and see how others are using Swedish phrases in context.
Also, there are resources available through google.se that is not available through google.com
Andra Avenyn
Andra Avenyn is a Swedish drama series that is set in Göteborg. Its really quite entertaining and super beneficial for those of us learning Swedish as a second or third language. You will be surprised how much you pick up on, and how much you begin to understand. It's fun because you hear phrases like "vad håller du på med?!" and "herre gud" at least once every episode.
Andra Avenyn
Click the above link to go to the Andra Avenyn page på svt.se and click on 'Öppna Play Prima,' choose your episode (avsnitt) and watch. I think they upload a new episode at least once a week and they have over 100 episodes up now.
I highly highly recommending watching this series!