Making active verbs passive in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 9, 2012
One thing that separates Swedish from English is that you can often make active verbs in Swedish passive by simply adding an -s to the end of the active form. For example: att sparka (to kick) → att sparkas (to be kicked) We can use each of these forms of the word in a sentence…
“Having to do with something” in Swedish Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 6, 2012
There are plenty of phrases that we use in English that can be [nearly] directly translated into Swedish. One of these phrases is att ha med något att göra, “to have to do with something”. Now, those of you who are familiar with the individual words in this phrase will notice that their order is…
Landing at Arlanda – Visiting Sweden Posted by Marcus Cederström on Jul 5, 2012
Sweden’s main airport is Arlanda, located just a bit outside of Stockholm. It’s an easy enough airport to get to, but if you’re heading into town, it does take a bit of travel. And let’s be honest, if you’ve just arrived in Stockholm on a trans-Atlantic flight, the last thing you want is more travel…
Just how tired are you? Posted by Katja on Jul 4, 2012
Depending on what modifiers you use in front of the adjective the degree of what is or what you are changes quite a lot. We’ll take a look at the most common words which change the degree of how you are feeling. Once you have learned these words your language will take on a much…
English “self” vs. Swedish själv Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jul 2, 2012
The Swedish word själv has the same has the same origin and meaning as its English equivalent “self”, but its pronunciation and therewith its spelling have developed rather differently from the English – “self” vs. själv. However, if we look back at Runic Swedish from around 800 AD, we can find many instances of a…
Countable vs. uncountable nouns Posted by Stephen Maconi on Jun 29, 2012
In English, there are countable nouns and uncountable nouns. An example of a countable noun in English is “cat”. It is considered a countable noun because there can be one or several instances of “cat”. Uncountable nouns, such as “music”, cannot have several instances – you cannot have *”one music” nor *”two musics”. It’s just…
Visiting Sweden – Gamla Stan Posted by Marcus Cederström on Jun 28, 2012
All this language learning should be good for something. Like visiting Sweden maybe. There’s hardly a better time to visit Sweden than summertime. Having lived in Stockholm for quite some time, I’m especially partial to the capital. It’s a beautiful city built on several islands meaning you’re never far from the water. There are museums…