Archive for 'Grammar'
Three Common Swedish Mistakes Posted by Marcus Cederström on Sep 25, 2015
Learning a language can be difficult and early on (and even later on) there are some common mistakes that you’ll make again and again. That’s ok. But some of them can be easily remedied. Let’s take a look at three common Swedish mistakes. Svart vs. svårt One pesky letter. That’s all it takes sometimes to…
“Where” in Swedish: var, vart and varifrån Posted by Stephen Maconi on Sep 3, 2015
In Swedish, there are three words for “where”. These are var, vart and varifrån. The differences between them aren’t too hard to master. They have to do with movement vs. non-movement, as well as direction. Var is the simplest of the three. It asks about a static location. For example: Var står bilen? – Where…
Swedish verbs: “vill” does not mean “will” Posted by Stephen Maconi on Aug 27, 2015
There’s a lot that Swedish and English have in common. There is plenty of similar vocabulary – dag means “day”, skyskrapa means “skyscraper” – and plenty of similar expressions as well. One word that is a false cognate – a faux ami – is the Swedish verb vilja. Its present form is vill, and it…
Super Scary Prepositions: Vid Posted by Marcus Cederström on Aug 25, 2015
This is the third post in a very infrequent series about prepositions. We’ve covered the preposition till and the preposition under in the past, and now it’s time for vid. Prepositions are incredibly difficult to get right when learning a new language. Unfortunately, they’re also very important to greater levels of understanding. But don’t worry!…
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…
Super Scary Prepositions: Under Posted by Marcus Cederström on Feb 16, 2015
This is the second post in the “Super Scary Prepositions” series. The first, written around Halloween inspired the name. Since prepositions are scary at any time of the year, I’m going to stick with the title and just call it a series. Anyway, if you missed the first one, it was about the preposition till…