Archive for 'Swedish Language'
Ordering at a Café in Swedish Posted by Marcus Cederström on Apr 24, 2015
Anyone who has ever worked to learn another language knows the situation. You’re in a new country, let’s say, hypothetically, Sweden. You’re ready to partake in the Swedish fika tradition. You’re excited to test out your Swedish. But before heading in to the café, you want to make sure you’ve got it all right. So…
How to Do a Whole Poodle in Swedish Posted by Marcus Cederström on Mar 31, 2015
That title doesn’t make much sense, does it? That’s what happens sometimes with literal translations. But in Sweden, you’ll sometimes see headlines about someone who has gjort en hel pudel. In fact, just recently, after Sweden apologized (or didn’t apologize) to Saudi Arabia after the country chose not to renew an arms deal with…
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…
What Does That Mean? Swedish Town Names Posted by Marcus Cederström on Feb 10, 2015
Since you’ve all been browsing IKEA’s website to improve your Swedish, you may have noticed that a lot of Swedish cities, towns, and villages have similar endings. Those endings actually mean something though. Let’s take a look at ten different endings that you may find while shopping IKEA or driving through the Swedish countryside: Borg…
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…
Swedish Learning Techniques at IKEA Posted by Marcus Cederström on Jan 27, 2015
At my friendly neighborhood IKEA, there is a sign staring back me when I leave, which is covered in green, yellow, and red smiley faces. The faces remind me of the best time to visit IKEA based on the number of people in the store. The red means super duper busy, the yellow super busy…
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…