{"id":395,"date":"2008-06-03T09:47:17","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T13:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=2"},"modified":"2008-06-03T09:47:17","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T13:47:17","slug":"learn-basic-swedish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/learn-basic-swedish\/","title":{"rendered":"The Basics: Swedish is Easy!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know some foreigners who\u2019ve been living in Sweden for about 10 years, yet they still don\u2019t know any Swedish. They say there\u2019s no need for them to learn, because everyone here speaks English. Some even go as far as to complain that Swedish is difficult to learn.<br \/>\nYeah? You think so? How much <strong>Absolut<\/strong> have you been drinking lately?<\/p>\n<p>Swedish must be one of the easiest European languages out there! Don\u2019t believe me? Check this out:<\/p>\n<p>I am Swedish. &#8211;     <strong>Jag \u00e4r svensk<\/strong>.<br \/>\nYou are Swedish. &#8211;     <strong>Du \u00e4r svensk<\/strong>.<br \/>\nHe\/she is Swedish. &#8211;     <strong>Han\/hon \u00e4r svensk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of the pesky <strong>am\/are\/is<\/strong>, Swedish has just one version \u2013 <strong>\u00e4r<\/strong>.<br \/>\nIsn\u2019t that wonderful?<br \/>\nAnd wait! It gets better. In English we have:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nI write. But &#8211; He\/she writes.<\/p>\n<p>But in Swedish, it\u2019s all the same:<br \/>\n<strong>Jag skriver. Han skriver. Hon skriver.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are no pesky auxiliary verbs such as \u201cdo\u201d or \u201cdoes\u201d or \u201cdid\u201d. To form a question, you simply flip the sentence order.<br \/>\n<strong>Skriver han?<\/strong> \u2013 Does he write?<\/p>\n<p>And get this, it can also mean \u201cIs he writing?\u201d Tada! We just got rid of a whole verb tense!<\/p>\n<p>Just like in English, the verb \u201cto write\u201d (skriva) is irregular in Swedish as well.<br \/>\n<strong>Skriva<\/strong> is the basic (infinitive) form, just like \u201cto write\u201d would be in English.<br \/>\n<strong>Skriver<\/strong> \u2013 write (present tense)<br \/>\n<strong>Skrev<\/strong> \u2013 wrote (past tense)<br \/>\n<strong>Skrivit<\/strong> \u2013 written (perfect)<\/p>\n<p>While the verbs are easy, Swedish nouns can get a bit funky. But don\u2019t despair, not as funky as Russian nouns, for example. In fact, when compared to Russian, Swedish nouns are a cakewalk.<\/p>\n<p>But forget about the nouns for a while.<br \/>\nJust revel in the idea of using \u201c<strong>\u00e4r<\/strong>\u201d when talking about yourself! Doesn\u2019t it feel good?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jag \u00e4r s\u00e5 duktig!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>duktig<\/strong>&#8211; smart, clever<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know some foreigners who\u2019ve been living in Sweden for about 10 years, yet they still don\u2019t know any Swedish. They say there\u2019s no need for them to learn, because everyone here speaks English. Some even go as far as to complain that Swedish is difficult to learn. Yeah? You think so? How much Absolut&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/learn-basic-swedish\/\">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":[51,364864,3438,165],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-grammar","tag-conjugation","tag-grammar","tag-svensk","tag-verb"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","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=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}