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Talking about specific years in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jun 5, 2015
In English, when you want to say that something happened during a specific year, you say, for example: IKEA was founded in 1943. In Swedish, you express this slightly differently; namely, you leave out the preposition “in”. The same sentences is said in Swedish as this: IKEA grundades 1943. In other words, it would be…
Important Swedish verbs: att bli, “to become” Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jun 1, 2015
Also known as bliva*, the Swedish verb bli is one of the most useful ones to know. It has several uses, but the main meaning is “to become”. (*Bliva is an older variant of the word that you might see in older texts or songs. Bli is the variant used in modern Swedish, so this…
Swedish grammar: Is it “han” or “honom”? The answer might not be what you think! Posted by Stephen Maconi on Feb 6, 2015
If you’ve lived in Sweden for any extended period of time, you may have noticed that there are plenty of dialects and plenty of personal, individual variants (so-called “ideolects”) of Swedish. One particular variation you might happen to notice is the use of han rather than honom as the third-person male object pronoun of a…
How to want in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jan 22, 2015
Hejsan hejsan! Human beings need and want all over the place. Consequently, one of the most basic and, frankly, most important things you can learn to say in a foreign language is “I want”. It’s simply something you want to know how to say! (ho ho) In Swedish, there are two easy ways to say…
Awesomely easy Swedish grammar: Singular articles Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jan 14, 2015
Articles are words that are used to show whether a noun (person, place, or thing) is a specific one (previously metioned in conversation with a particular person) or an unspecific one. In English, we have three articles: a, an, and the. A and an have the same function: to show that the dog in the…
Why the double-definite in Swedish? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Dec 1, 2014
As you study Swedish, you will notice that the definite form, or in more literal but less accurate terms the “the”-form, is often shown in two positions: at the beginning of the noun phrase and tacked-on at the end of the main noun in the noun phrase. In other words, you will often see the…
Swedish Grammar: General and specific “this” Posted by Stephen Maconi on Nov 3, 2014
Mmmmm! Hallå mina vänner! I had thought I was done with my series on demonstrative pronouns in Swedish, but I noticed a comment at the last minute with a great question that I decided deserved a full post. You might notice when listening to Swedish that when a person is presenting something new, they will…