How to Impress Your Swedish Friends: Abbreviate Your Clauses Posted by Marcus Cederström on Apr 28, 2014
As you get more and more comfortable with Swedish, you’ll start to notice that some of those pesky bisatser, or subordinate clauses, are being shortened by Swedish speakers. In Swedish, it’s called a satsförkortning. In English, it just means that you’re abbreviating the clause. For example: Han såg att hon sjöng. He saw that she…
The peculiar Swedish “k” Posted by Stephen Maconi on Mar 28, 2014
Hejsan! I’ve had a lot going on for the past weeks so haven’t managed to finish editing my latest video until now. It’s called “The cat who drove the refrigerator into the church” and is about the Swedish letter “k”. “K”, in Swedish, is a peculiar letter that can be pronounced in (basically) two different…
Democracy in Sweden Posted by Marcus Cederström on Mar 26, 2014
It’s been a while since we talked about Swedish culture. It’s been grammar heavy lately, which is obviously important when learning a language, but when studying a language, it’s also important to understand what is happening culturally in a country. That includes the good things (like delicious Swedish candy and amazing Swedish movies and wonderful…
Swedish with Steve Returns to Life Posted by Stephen Maconi on Mar 3, 2014
Hej, dear readers! On the 10th of June, 2011, I posted my last Swedish language video, a review of my series Swedish with Steve, here on the Transparent Swedish Blog. It was my final year of high school and I was planning a return back to Sweden to study Swedish at university level. My plans ended…
What an Ugly Baby! Exclaiming in Swedish Posted by Marcus Cederström on Feb 28, 2014
Admit it. You’ve been on Facebook and thought the exact same thing as everyone starts fawning over the newest addition to your world. It happens. Don’t be ashamed. But don’t say it out loud either. Unless you can say it in another language that the parents might not understand. Like Swedish. So let’s learn how…
Än or Ännu? Posted by Marcus Cederström on Feb 11, 2014
This is one of those questions that seems relatively simple, when should you use än and when should you use ännu? Or are they just the same word? Quick answer, when än acts as an adverb the two words can generally be considered synonyms and you can usually switch between the two, so feel free…
The Laid-Back Swedish Sentence – S-Passive! Posted by Marcus Cederström on Jan 30, 2014
We’ve written a bit about passive verbs here in the past (Where does the -s-passive come from?, Making active verbs passive in Swedish, Passive in Swedish), but it’s been a while, so I thought I would revisit the subject by focusing exclusively on the s-passive. First, the passive gets used quite a bit in newspaper…