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Going places without a “go” verb in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Feb 5, 2016
Swedish loves to cause lots of confusion when it comes to talking about going to places. There are lots of verbs which correspond to the English “to go”; to name a few: gå, åka, fara, sticka, ge sig iväg, and even dra (“to pull”) in some cases. But since there apparently aren’t enough verbs to talk…
Prepositions used with days of the week in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Feb 3, 2016
Prepositions are a pain. When I first started learning Swedish, I found Swedish prepositions so frustrating, because they often didn’t always match the English ones exactly. Or the Spanish ones. Or the German ones. Well, worry not! I’m here to save you from your preposition misery! This time, we’ll cover prepositions used with the…
5 English words borrowed from Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jan 18, 2016
Borrowing vocabulary is no unusual linguistic phenomenon. Just look at English – there are French words all over the place! Most people know that a very large portion of English vocabulary is from other languages. Well, some of these thousands of words are, in fact, from Swedish! Here are 5 of them. Some, you…
What does it mean to “dive up” in Swedish? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jan 13, 2016
Swedish is full of what we know as “phrasal verbs” in English – verbs that have an associated and required verb particle. Don’t get the linguistics jargon? It refers to verbs like “run out”, “calm down” and “show up”, where the first part is the verb, i.e. “show”, and the second part is a particle…
What does it mean to “black-paint” someone in Swedish? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Dec 18, 2015
Like many other languages, the Swedish language has a large variety of different expressions. Some of these expressions are similar to expressions in other languages – and some are more-or-less unique to Swedish. These expressions vary from being several words long to being only one word. One useful piece of interesting vocabulary in Swedish…
Sweetish Swedish pancakes – maybe not what you’d expect! Posted by Stephen Maconi on Dec 10, 2015
Swedish pancakes come sweet or savory – here, I’ll give you the run-down on sweet Swedish pancakes! One very popular dish in Sweden is the pannkaka – the Swedish pancake. American readers might see the word “pancake” and think, “Oh! Swedish-style pancakes!” Well, no. Swedish pancakes aren’t really just Swedish-style pancakes. They’re more like crêpes…
Emphasizing adjectives in Swedish with “så” and “sådan” Posted by Stephen Maconi on Nov 30, 2015
There are lots of ways to emphasize adjectives in Swedish. Many of these ways are very similar to how we emphasize adjectives in English. One way to emphasize adjectives in Swedish is to use så or sådan. Both create the same emphasis, but they are used in different ways. The difference between så and sådan is similar…