Archive for 'Grammar'
Swedish Syntax variations in main clauses Posted by Tibor on Mar 19, 2012
Fundament is the most important part of a sentence, i.e. the word that comes on the first place in a Swedish sentence. On the first place there can be 5 different types of clause elements. 1, Subjekt=Subject 2,Tidsadverbial, platsadverbial, sättsadverbial= Different kind of adverbs 3, Bisats=Subordinate clause 4, Objekt=Object 5, Fågeord=Interrogative words 6, Ingenthing=Nothing Two…
Swedish Sayings on Twitter! Posted by Marcus Cederström on Mar 12, 2012
A little over a week ago, a trending hashtag on Twitter was #swedishsayings. It was an entertaining look at some of the different sayings in Swedish and their literal English translations. Since then, there has been a steady stream of different idioms that have been translated to English. And it entertains me to no end…
Swedish Madlibs Posted by Marcus Cederström on Feb 7, 2012
We’re going to try something new here. A Swedish Madlib. I’ve used Swedish Madlibs before, at the behest of a good friend actually, and loved them. They tend to get you thinking about various grammatical forms, how to use them, and of course what words you actually know. It’s a great way to practice the…
Why does ‘hand’ become ‘händer’ in plural? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jan 24, 2012
This is one question that boggles the minds of many learners of the Swedish language (as well as the other Nordic languages). Why doesn’t ‘hand’ just become ‘hander’ or ‘handar’ in plural? The answer to this lies in a major change that occurred throughout Germanic Europe in the Early Middle Ages (which in Scandinavia was…
Stop or shut? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jan 17, 2012
Similar to the nouns in last Tuesday’s post, there are a number of Swedish verbs that have the same infinite form but different meanings and different conjugation. One of the best examples is the words sluta, meaning either “stop”, “end”, or “shut”, depending on its context and grammatical conjugation. It is also worth noting that…
Dust or pond? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jan 10, 2012
There are lots of words in Swedish, just as in English, that have several meanings. One example of this relatively common phenomenon is the Swedish word damm. (Please keep in mind that the double m makes the vowel a short. If you pronounce the a long, you’re saying dam, which means ‘lady’.) Damm can mean…
“What is this?” in Swedish Posted by Katja on Jan 6, 2012
So, after looking at the feedback some of you guys sent in many of you were interested in becoming more able to have everyday conversations. I thought, since I don’t really have a good idea of what level you all are at, I start somewhere in the really basic area and work towards more complex…