Bake your own Swedish pepparkakor! Posted by Chelsea B on Dec 18, 2019
Each Christmas, I make a few Swedish recipes to share with family and friends. My two favorites are glögg, wine mulled in spices, and pepparkakor, crispy, spicy ginger cookies. While these recipes are old classics, I love them because they are also staples for modern Swedish holiday celebrations. Many Swedish-American food traditions are recipes that…
Swedish Short Answers Posted by Chelsea B on Dec 10, 2019
Today I’d like to focus on Swedish kortsvar, or short answer format. This comes into play when answering yes or no questions and uses an inverted structure. Essentially, it’s the “yes, I do” or “no, I do not” of Swedish. There are a few different ways of answering questions in Swedish. The first way is…
Popular Swedish Christmas Tunes Posted by Chelsea B on Dec 3, 2019
December means that the jul-vibes are copious in many countries! Sweden is no exception. When strolling through town, you’ll see lights, decorations, and hear sweet Christmas tunes pumped out of speakers to get folks in the holiday mood. Because it’s the first Tuesday of the month, that means that this blog post is going to…
Get to know Swedish Julkalender Posted by Chelsea B on Nov 26, 2019
Julkalender is an annual television event of epic proportions. Swedish Television, SVT, goes all-out to produce an original Christmas-themed series that Swedes both young and old look forward to. The show premiers on December 1st and concludes on Christmas Eve. Keeping up with julkalender is like having one of those advent calendars where you…
What do you usually, often, never do in Swedish? Posted by Chelsea B on Nov 19, 2019
Last week’s blog post was all about how helping verbs describe what we “can, need, must, may” do. In this post, we’ll discuss the Swedish word brukar, or “usually”, which also functions as a helping verb. This verb comes in handy when talking about your daily routine, what you usually do in your free…
Step up your Swedish with helping verbs Posted by Chelsea B on Nov 12, 2019
Mastering Swedish hjälpverb, or helping verbs, is a stellar skill. Once my Swedish students have good command over basic sentence structure and present tense verbs, it’s go-time for this concept in class! Helping verbs are sprinkled everywhere into everyday Swedish, and are important in building conversation skills. Swedish helping verb construction A helping verb…
An Introduction to Swedish Musik Posted by Chelsea B on Nov 5, 2019
Music is a huge passion of mine, so I’ve decided to dedicate the first post of each month to it. Music allows listeners to explore a variety of narratives within a culture and is a fantastic tool for language acquisition. Whether it’s boosting general listening comprehension or learning the rhythm of spoken language, music…