Archive for the year 2011
Age in Sweden Posted by Katja on Sep 16, 2011
The almighty ‘personnummer’ (your birthdate) makes everyones ages’ public and this may explain why Swedes do not mind giving their age when introducing themselves. For example when a group of people introduce themselves for each other, they say what their name is and how old they are. You age is a kind of ‘taboo’ subject…
10 facts about Swedish politics Posted by jennie on Sep 15, 2011
Since today marks the opening of the Swedish Riksdag and it’s election day in our neighbouring country Denmark, I figured 10 nice and easy facts about Swedish politics would be appropriate. 1. As Head of State, the King opens the Riksdag session every year in mid-September. This service takes place in Storkyrkan and the…
Många vs. Mycket Posted by Marcus Cederström on Sep 15, 2011
Jenny’s post on Hur mycket kostar det? definitely hit a nerve, not just because I am a poor student again and ask that question all the time, but because it did a wonderful job of demonstrating a very important “how” question. One that in this case uses mycket – much. But there is another “how”…
Swedish Present Tense in relation to “before and after now” Posted by Tibor on Sep 14, 2011
FÖRE NU (past aspect) NU (present aspect) EFTER NU (future aspect) Perfect: Finished activity, but unknown or continous time sequence. Jag har arbetat mycket den här månaden. I have worked much this month.Perfect: Perfect has usually a result in the now. The activity might have started before “now”. Jag har öppnat fönstret. result: Fönstret är…
Like this, like that Posted by Stephen Maconi on Sep 13, 2011
When trying to explain the extent to which something has a certain property in Swedish, you’ll have to know the following grammar! The extent to which something has a certain property – inside the nominal phrase Using the word ‘such’ in such cases as ‘You have such a pretty house!’ is possible to say in…
What’s wrong with Stockholm? Posted by jennie on Sep 9, 2011
Just came across this article from the CNN.com travel column “The State I’m In” by Brendan Francis Newnam. It’s about Stockholm and thought I’d share it with you. It’s spot on in so many ways, and fun and useful as well. A snippet: “In fact, Stockholm is so attractive and so user-friendly that your feelings about it…
Sweden mourns Stefan Liv 1980-2011 Posted by jennie on Sep 8, 2011
Yesterday, 43 people was killed when an airplane carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team to Minsk, Belarus, crashed just minutes after take off from an airport north of Moscow. One of them was Stefan Liv, a much loved sportsman and Sweden’s national team goaltender. Stefan was 3o years old and he only got married to…