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Stockholm at a lack of student dwellings Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 23, 2012
This year, Stockholm University accepted over 47,000 students, 2000 more than last year, setting a record for the university. Of those 47,000 students (both continuing and new), approximately 20,000 need student accommodation for this coming semester and beyond. But when Stockholm only has 12,000 student rooms and apartments to offer, what do you do with…
Where does the -s-passive come from? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 16, 2012
The -s-passive is something that doesn’t exist (at least not in the same form) in English, so one might be curious about how it appeared in Swedish. Here’s your explanation from Uppsala, Sweden! (Those of you who missed last week’s post about passive verbs in Swedish will want to read it first, unless you already…
Making active verbs passive in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 9, 2012
One thing that separates Swedish from English is that you can often make active verbs in Swedish passive by simply adding an -s to the end of the active form. For example: att sparka (to kick) → att sparkas (to be kicked) We can use each of these forms of the word in a sentence…
“Having to do with something” in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 6, 2012
There are plenty of phrases that we use in English that can be [nearly] directly translated into Swedish. One of these phrases is att ha med något att göra, “to have to do with something”. Now, those of you who are familiar with the individual words in this phrase will notice that their order is…
English “self” vs. Swedish själv Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 2, 2012
The Swedish word själv has the same has the same origin and meaning as its English equivalent “self”, but its pronunciation and therewith its spelling have developed rather differently from the English – “self” vs. själv. However, if we look back at Runic Swedish from around 800 AD, we can find many instances of a…
Countable vs. uncountable nouns Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jun 29, 2012
In English, there are countable nouns and uncountable nouns. An example of a countable noun in English is “cat”. It is considered a countable noun because there can be one or several instances of “cat”. Uncountable nouns, such as “music”, cannot have several instances – you cannot have *”one music” nor *”two musics”. It’s just…
The origin of the word ‘på’ Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jun 22, 2012
Different people learn languages for different reasons. Different people are also interested in different aspects of the language they are learning. One of my personal favorite aspects of the Swedish language is its history, and having studied the history of the Swedish language at Uppsala University, I have a lot to share with you about…