Fortfarande or ännu, that is the question Posted by jennie on Jan 18, 2010 in Swedish Language
New week and new Swedish words, grammar and phrases to study! Before we move on to something more exciting, let’s finish off what I started last week with ÄN, ÄNDÅ, ÄNNU och FORTFARANDE. Fortfarande and ännu are the words of today and I had to consult our great langugae expert Tibor on this one, not even the natives are certain of the differences between these two, be sure about that! And to be fair, there isn’t much of a difference in today’s Swedish. But let’s be good students and learn the tiny difference there is:
FORTFARANDE = STILL
EX: Är du fortfarande här? = Are you still here?
ÄNNU = YET
EX: Jag har ännu inte varit i Sverige = I have not yet been to Sweden.
ÄNNU is normally used in a negative sentence, but to make things easy (or confusing?), you can use either of the words in both sentences above. But the content of the sentence can change slightly depending on which word you use:
EX: Polisen har inte hittat mördaren ännu = The police have not found the killer yet
This indicates that the police have not found the killer yet but there might be a breakthrough soon.
EX: Polisen har fortfarande inte hittat mördaren = The police still haven’t found the killer
I can hear a criticism here, can you?
EX: Hon har inte ätit ännu = She hasn’t eaten yet
But she will, when dinner is served.
EX: Hon äter fortfarande inte = She still hasn’t eaten
Because she is ill, is on a hunger strike…
Make sense?
Well, here’s a rule of thumb-sentence to remember regarding FORTFARANDE och ÄNNU:
Jag har fortfarande inte lärt mig det här men jag ger inte upp ännu!
I still haven’t learnt this but I’m not giving up yet!
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Comments:
Majlis Hanson:
Look at the examples with ANNU & FORFARANDE you gave above I noticed that the positions of them in the sentences is quite different, isn’t it? ANNU appears at the end of the sentance. Meanwhile, FORFARANDE follows the verb. Does my observation correct?
Tack!
doviende:
Thanks for these great examples! They’re really helpful, especially with the contrasting examples to show the differences.
Majlis: If you look at the first example, “Jag har ännu inte varit i Sverige”, then it doesn’t match your pattern, so I suspect it’s not as easily classified as you think. I find that the best way to figure out usage of words like this is to read lots, and you just get a sense for it after seeing many examples.
rex:
Ännu is also used in comparisons like ännu mer, ännu länge, ännu bättre, etc.