{"id":1147,"date":"2010-07-04T00:13:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-04T00:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/07\/surprisingly-swedish-saturday\/"},"modified":"2010-07-04T00:13:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-04T00:13:00","slug":"surprisingly-swedish-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/07\/surprisingly-swedish-saturday.html","title":{"rendered":"Surprisingly Swedish Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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On Saturday (if I say either \u201cyesterday\u201d or \u201ctoday\u201d it will be confusing since it just turned midnight) I drove to IKEA to buy some shelves that are being discontinued and are thus on sale. For the trip (more than three hours each way) I took along language learning materials on CD, including the Pimsleur Swedish<\/a>\"\"<\/span> course. Once I finished that (there are, alas, only ten half-hour lessons in that set) I tried the Michel Thomas Foundation course in Arabic<\/a>\"\"<\/span>. I had long wanted to try out a course in that series, since it is an all-audio approach,\u00a0yet a bit different than the Pimsleur courses. My impression so far is positive \u2013 it basically lets you\u00a0play the role of\u00a0the relatively quiet kid in the back of the class! The Michel Thomas course focuses on Egyptian colloquial Arabic, while the longer of the Pimsleur courses focuses on the Arabic spoken in Syria and its neighbors.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever used the Teach Yourself Arabic Conversation <\/a>\"\"<\/span>CDs, you\u2019ll recognize the voice of Mahmoud Gaafar, who gets to play less colorful roles in the Michel Thomas course.<\/p>\n

Anyway, since today we celebrate the 4th of July, this post\u2019s topic could seem inappropriate \u2013 were it not for the fact that our society was and remains multi-cultural and somewhat multi-lingual \u2013 as well as having declared our dependence on rather than independence from IKEA.<\/p>\n

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On Saturday (if I say either \u201cyesterday\u201d or \u201ctoday\u201d it will be confusing since it just turned midnight) I drove to IKEA to buy some shelves that are being discontinued and are thus on sale. 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