Archive by Author
The peculiar Swedish “k” Posted by Stephen Maconi on Mar 28, 2014
Hejsan! I’ve had a lot going on for the past weeks so haven’t managed to finish editing my latest video until now. It’s called “The cat who drove the refrigerator into the church” and is about the Swedish letter “k”. “K”, in Swedish, is a peculiar letter that can be pronounced in (basically) two different…
Swedish with Steve Returns to Life Posted by Stephen Maconi on Mar 3, 2014
Hej, dear readers! On the 10th of June, 2011, I posted my last Swedish language video, a review of my series Swedish with Steve, here on the Transparent Swedish Blog. It was my final year of high school and I was planning a return back to Sweden to study Swedish at university level. My plans ended…
To ‘speak’ in Swedish: tala, prata, snacka. Which one do I use?! Posted by Stephen Maconi on Oct 14, 2013
I live in a very culturally diverse part of Uppsala where there are many non-Swedes. As a result, many of my friends and acquaintances in the area are in the process of learning Swedish either just for fun or in order to really dig into the Swedish culture – after all, you can’t really get…
5 Tips for Learning Swedish Effectively Online Posted by Stephen Maconi on Aug 16, 2013
Hej! Det var länge se’n! – Long time no see! After a several months’ break from blogging, I’m back with 5 great tips to help you effectively learn Swedish on the Internet! These are methods I’ve used personally and found particularly helpful in my journey toward Swedish fluency. Of course, I have lived in Sweden…
The many uses of the preposition “av” Posted by Stephen Maconi on Apr 19, 2013
Some of our readers have requested a post about the Swedish preposition av, so here it is! The word has many uses, among them what is expressed by English “of”. This is, however, far from always the case, and “of” can also be expressed by other Swedish prepositions, depending on what the speaker means to…
Robin Stjernberg wins Melodifestivalen Posted by Stephen Maconi on Apr 2, 2013
By now this is relatively old news, but it is certainly still relevant! This year, Sweden will send Robin Stjernberg, winner of this year’s Melodifestivalen, to Malmö, a city in the very south of Sweden, with his song You to perform in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. For those of you who are unaware, the…
Expressing the “same” in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Feb 28, 2013
You walk into your office one morning and one of your colleagues says, “Hey, look! We are wearing the same shirt at the same time!”. Daily office life is just remarkable, isn’t it? In English, wearing the “same” shirt and wearing it at the “same” time as someone else are both expressed by the same…