{"id":209,"date":"2009-05-22T17:31:13","date_gmt":"2009-05-22T21:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=209"},"modified":"2009-05-22T17:31:13","modified_gmt":"2009-05-22T21:31:13","slug":"swedish-supines-and-past-participles-and-more-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-supines-and-past-participles-and-more-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Supines and Past Participles and More Grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know how I always tell you that Swedish is so similar to English that learning it should be a cake-walk really?<\/p>\n<p>Well, today, I will break with this long-standing tradition and instead I&#8217;m going to tell you that Swedish is not like English at all and that it can be quite hard to get it right.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve never even thought about this issue, because well, frankly, it\u2019s never even crossed my mind. Until I had to help someone deal with supines and past participles. And the trouble began.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWait!\u201d<\/em> I hear you say, <em>\u201cisn\u2019t it, like, pretty much basic and easy in English?\u201d<\/em><br \/>\nYes it is. But it\u2019s not so easy in Swedish. Especially for an English speaker <em>(hence I kindly ask all native Swedes reading this blog post to please consider this fact while commenting, thank you).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You see, the English supine is the bare naked infinitive form, the kind we stick \u201cto\u201d in front of.<br \/>\nBut in Swedish, the supine is the stuff we use to construct perfect tenses &#8211; as in \u201c<strong>jag har\/hade + Swedish supine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So, it looks like the Swedish supine is what in English we\u2019d call a past participle.<\/p>\n<p>So, what\u2019s a past participle in Swedish? Hmmm\u2026 It\u2019s also a verb form, but it\u2019s used as an adjective. And it also follows the same rules as all normal adjectives do.<\/p>\n<p>So, let\u2019s take a look at this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>skriva <\/strong>\u2013 to write<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and in all the tenses:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>skriver<\/strong> \u2013 write (present tense)<\/li>\n<li><strong>skrev<\/strong> \u2013 wrote (past tense)<\/li>\n<li><strong>skrivit<\/strong> \u2013 written (used in perfect tenses \u2013 this \u201c<strong>skrivit<\/strong>\u201d is the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Swedish supine<\/span>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>skriven<\/strong> \u2013 \u201cwritten\u201d as an adjective \u2013 this is the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Swedish past participle<\/span>, this form is used with \u201c<strong>en<\/strong>\u201d nouns<\/li>\n<li><strong>skrivet<\/strong> \u2013 \u201cwritten\u201d as an adjective \u2013 this form is used with \u201c<strong>ett<\/strong>\u201d nouns<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>skrivna<\/strong> \u2013 \u201cwritten\u201d as an adjective \u2013 this form is used with plural nouns.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>\u201cOuch!\u201d<\/em> I hear you say and I don\u2019t blame you. Maybe these very simple examples will make it clearer:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>N\u00e5gon har skrivit ett brev.<\/strong> \u2013 Someone has written a letter. &#8211; That&#8217;s our garden variety present perfect tense. Nothing complicated here. &#8220;<strong>Skrivit<\/strong>&#8221; is the Swedish supine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Detta brev var skrivet p\u00e5 engelska.<\/strong> \u2013 This letter was written in English. &#8211; \u201c<strong>Brev<\/strong>\u201d is an \u201c<strong>ett<\/strong>\u201d noun and the past participle form we need to use here is \u201c<strong>skrivet<\/strong>\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Denna text var skriven i december 2008<\/strong>. \u2013 This text was written in December 2008. &#8211; \u201c<strong>Text<\/strong>\u201d is an \u201c<strong>en<\/strong>\u201d noun and the past participle form that matches it is \u201c<strong>skriven<\/strong>\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Alla gamla b\u00f6cker var skrivna p\u00e5 latin<\/strong>. \u2013 All old books were written in Latin. &#8211; \u201c<strong>B\u00f6cker<\/strong>\u201d is a plural noun, and so we need to use the plural form of past participle, which in this case is \u201c<strong>skrivna<\/strong>\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course I made it difficult for you by choosing an irregular verb for these examples, so next time I\u2019ll show you how this Swedish past participle stuff works with normal, boring, regular verbs, OK?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know how I always tell you that Swedish is so similar to English that learning it should be a cake-walk really? Well, today, I will break with this long-standing tradition and instead I&#8217;m going to tell you that Swedish is not like English at all and that it can be quite hard to get&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-supines-and-past-participles-and-more-grammar\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17,3172,3175,364864,3234,110,120,3435,166],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-grammar","tag-adjectives","tag-en-words","tag-ett-words","tag-grammar","tag-irregular-verbs","tag-nouns","tag-past-participle","tag-supine","tag-verbs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}