Super Swedish grammar: The beef rule Posted by Stephen Maconi on Oct 7, 2015
Yes, Swedish has a rule known as the BIFF rule. This is spelt and pronounced in speech the same way as the word biff, which means “beef”, so I like to call it the “beef rule” in English. Fortunately enough, the language doesn’t regulate beef, however — the BIFF rule, in Swedish biff-regeln, has to…
Emergency Vocabulary in Swedish Posted by Marcus Cederström on Sep 30, 2015
Sweden is an incredibly safe country. Serious crimes are rare, but that being said, crimes do occur. In 2014, according to The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet—Brå), there were 20,300 reported sex-related crimes, of which 6,700 were rape. Eighty-seven people died as a result of murder or manslaughter and 6,269 hate crimes…
Exciting Swedish dialects: Grammatical differences Posted by Stephen Maconi on Sep 29, 2015
Normally, learners of a second language like Swedish want to learn the standard version, which for Swedish as known as rikssvenska or standardsvenska. Yet, Sweden, being the long, vast country it is, has numerous dialects spoken in all the different parts of the country — some big, some small. So even if your goal is…
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…
Exciting Swedish dialects: Vocabulary Posted by Stephen Maconi on Sep 18, 2015
Normally, learners of a second language like Swedish want to learn the standard version, which for Swedish as known as rikssvenska or standardsvenska. Yet, Sweden, being the long, vast country it is, has numerous dialects spoken in all the different parts of the country — some big, some small. So even if your goal is…
Exciting Swedish dialects: Pronunciation Posted by Stephen Maconi on Sep 8, 2015
Normally, learners of a second language like Swedish want to learn the standard version, which for Swedish as known as rikssvenska or standardsvenska. Yet, Sweden, being the long, vast country it is, has numerous dialects spoken in all the different parts of the country — some big, some small. So even if your goal is 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…