Swedish Language Blog

There are lots of words in Swedish, just as in English, that have several meanings. One example of this relatively common phenomenon is the Swedish word damm. (Please keep in mind that the double m makes the vowel a short. If you pronounce the a long, you’re saying dam, which means ‘lady’.) Damm can mean two things: ‘dust’ and ‘pond’. Actually, it can also mean ‘dam’, but in this post I will use ‘dust’ and ‘pond’ as examples. (It has the same grammatical conjugation as damm meaning ‘pond’.)

So how do you know which one someone means? Well, just like in most cases, the meaning is relative to the context. Obviously, if someone says Det finns damm över hela mitt rum, he/she doesn’t mean “There’s a pond all over my room”.

Another important difference is the grammatical usage and conjugation of the words. Damm meaning ‘dust’ is not countable, meaning you can’t say Det finns tre damm i det här rummet, or ‘There are three dusts in this room”. However, you can say Det finns tre dammar i den här skogen, meaning “There are three ponds in this forest”.

You’ll notice that in the previous examples, the plural forms for “dust” and “pond” are different. Technically, “dust” can’t be plural at all, but since it’s a neutral-gender word (that ends in -et in definite form), I followed the general conjugation rules and left it as damm. For damm in the meaning of “pond”, however, the definite conjugation is dammar since it is a common-gender word (that ends in -en in definite form). This is what I meant by grammatical differences.

Another example is the word lag – it can mean either “team” (in neutral-gender form) or “law” (in common-gender form). The conjugations go like this:

You may notice that lagen can both mean “the teams” or “the law”. Interpretation of this depends on the context, just like the singular, indefinite forms of lag and lag and damm and damm.

These are far from the only examples of this phenomenon in Swedish. You’re sure to come across plenty of them as you study the language in further depth!

So, after looking at the feedback some of you guys sent in many of you were interested in becoming more able to have everyday conversations. I thought, since I don’t really have a good idea of what level you all are at, I start somewhere in the really basic area and work towards more complex things as we go along.

The most important phrase ever probably is “What is this in Swedish?”

Vad är det här på svenska?

This phrase is used when for example pointing at something close to you. Det här means this. You can of course substitute “det här” for “det där” (that) or “det därborta” (that over there).

Vad är ______ på svenska?

In the blank you just put in the English word you don’t know in Swedish.

Vad heter _____ på svenska?

Vad kallas ________ på svenska?

The same thing applies for heter and kallas. Heter literally means “named” and kallas is not too far off from the English “is called”.

If you know how to ask about the translation one way you should be able to ask what a unknown word’s meaning is the other way around.

Vad betyder _______ på engelska?

What does ________ (the word you didn’t understand) mean in English?

Vad heter _____ på engelska? Yet again, the same thing.

Vad kallas ______ på engelska? What is ______ called in English?

Vad är _______ på engelska? What is ________ in English?

If you want to know what the word means in a language other than English here are the names for some of the languages most commonly spoken in Sweden.

Note:  in English we say “in” English and use a capital letter for the language. In Swedish they do not use capitals for languages and they say “på engelska“. Literally translated as “on English”.

The words you put in the blanks can be very advanced or extremely simple.

Heres and example of a very simple word put into a conversation. Person A first asks what the word is in Swedish and then checks that they pronounced it correctly.

Person A) “Vad heter apple på svenska?”

Person B) “Det heter äpple”.

Person A) “Äppel?”

Person B) “Nej, äpp-le.”

Person A) “Äpple?”

Person B) “Ja, precis så”

Person A) “Tack”

I was reading through some of our older posts here and realized it had been quite some time since we got down to some of the basics. The days of the week. And the months.

Luckily for you, Tibor did an amazing job of explaining the Time Adverbs with certain tenses. It’s a great way of explain what you did yesterday, what you’re doing today, and what you plan to do tomorrow. Of course, you might want to know exactly how to say the days of the week you plan on doing something.

They’re pretty straightforward. In fact, you’ll notice quite a few similarities between the English words and the Swedish words. So, without further ado, the days of the week:

måndag = Monday
tisdag = Tuesday
onsdag = Wednesday
torsdag = Thursday
fredag = Friday
lördag = Saturday
söndag = Sunday

You’ll notice I started with måndag when listing the days of the week. I did that on purpose. When listing the days of the week in Sweden, people star with måndag and work their way down to söndag.

You’ll also notice within the sentence that I did not capitalize the word måndag. That’s because you don’t capitalize days of the week or months of the year in Swedish. While this might not have any bearing on your ability to speak Swedish, it most definitely does on your ability to write in Swedish. Just something to keep in mind as you continue working on your Swedish production.

Now that we’ve got the weeks down, let’s work on the months of the year. Again, you’ll notice quite a few similarities between the Swedish words for each month and the English word for each month.

januari = January
februari = February
mars = March
april = April
maj = May
juni = June
juli = July
augusti = August
september = September
oktober = October
november = November
december = December

So there you have it. One of those things that sometimes gets neglected, but is incredibly important in your everyday life.  Plus, it’s super easy. And when learning a language, it really is important to get those little victories that remind you that you did learn something and that you are making progress.  If you find yourself struggling with your language skills, check out our post Swedish Language Learning Tips for a few more helpful hints.  As always, good luck!