The -s-passive is something that doesn’t exist (at least not in the same form) in English, so one might be curious about how it appeared in Swedish. Here’s your explanation from Uppsala, Sweden!

(Those of you who missed last week’s post about passive verbs in Swedish will want to read it first, unless you already know what the -s-passive is.)

The -s-passive verb form actually evolved from the reflexive, or sig form. For instance, the reflexive form of kalla (to call) is kalla sig (to call oneself). Here you can see and understand the differences between the active form, the -s-passive form, and the reflexive form of kalla:

(Active) Jag kallade katten Fenrir. – I called the cat Fenrir.

(-s-Passive) Katten kallades Fenrir. – The cat was called Fenrir.

(Reflexive) Katten kallade sig Fenrir. – The cat called himself Fenrir.

Originally, the -s-passive was “conjugated” based on the sentence subject. For example, in Old Icelandic (very closely related to Old Swedish), “I am called Asmund” or “I call myself Asmund” would have looked like this:

Ek kallamk Asmunðr. (from kalla mik, equivalent to kallar mig in modern Swedish)

The Swedish language followed the same concept, but eventually, the third-person sig, or perhaps in a more contemporary fashion sik, took over and a certain nuance emerged between kalla sig and the new kallas. (The same process has occurred in the other Scandinavian languages. Modern Icelandic no longer uses -mk in first-person; regardless of the subject, the ending has evolved into -st.) Those of you who have studied or speak Spanish might find it interesting to compare this phenomenon to llamarse, meaning both “to be called” and “to call oneself”.