{"id":6839,"date":"2015-01-19T15:57:13","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T15:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=6839"},"modified":"2015-01-21T12:32:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T12:32:10","slug":"swedish-greetings-in-the-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-greetings-in-the-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Greetings in the New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

January is coming to a close and most everyone is back to work after having taken time off for the holidays here in Sweden. That won\u2019t stop you from hearing people greeting each other using the term god forts\u00e4ttning<\/em>. It literally means good continuation as in a continuation of the holidays. It\u2019s a wonderful phrase that really comes in handy during the months of December and January every year.<\/p>\n

Swedish has a lot of phrases that get thrown around during the holiday season. There\u2019s god jul<\/em> (Merry Christmas) and gott nytt \u00e5r<\/em> (Happy New Year), for example. But those are generally used for very specific days. Then there is god helg<\/em>, which is somewhat equivalent to happy holidays. And there\u2019s even gott slut<\/em>, which is basically a way to wish someone a happy end of the year. Although, I have to admit that I hear gott slut<\/em> so rarely that I considered not even including it in this post.<\/p>\n

When should you use all these terms? Gott slut<\/em> is a way to wish someone a happy end of the year and should be used, you guessed it, at the end of the year. Usually in the days leading up to New Years. God helg<\/em> is a catchall that gets used a lot in the fall and winter as people celebrate all kinds of things. But the more common ways of greeting someone during this time of year is with God jul<\/em> and gott nytt \u00e5r<\/em>, which are, of course, used at Christmas and New Years. You can combine the two and say god jul och gott nytt \u00e5r<\/em> in the days and weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year, especially if you don\u2019t think you\u2019ll see that person until after the holidays. It\u2019s like wishing them a happy everything, but in advance. And then there\u2019s god forts\u00e4ttning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Stockholm<\/a>

Stockholm in the late afternoon. Photo Credit: Marcus Cederstr\u00f6m<\/p><\/div>\n

There is no hard and fast rule for when you should say god forts\u00e4ttning<\/em>, but know that it is quite common. In fact, depending on who you ask, you might get different explanations as to how and when and why it should be used. Generally, you\u2019ll hear people say it in the days between Christmas and New Years. There it\u2019s being used as if to say, enjoy the rest of your holidays! And then in the days (and sometimes weeks) after New Years, you\u2019ll hear it again. There it\u2019s being used as if to say, enjoy the year to come! Now there might be some people who disagree with what I just wrote, because there is also a line of though that says that god forts\u00e4ttning<\/em> should only be used up until the epiphany\u2014January 6\u2014because that\u2019s the official end of Christmas.<\/p>\n

To confuse things even more, Institutet f\u00f6r spr\u00e5k och folkminnen<\/a> (The Institute for Language and Folklore) says that you can use the term at any time of the year. There reasoning is that whoever says it, determines the meaning. God forts\u00e4ttning<\/em> could be used to wish someone a happy holidays or a happy rest of their life. It really does it all. But they admit that it is most common in the days after Christmas and the beginning of January.<\/p>\n

As you\u2019re learning Swedish, it\u2019s best to play it safe\u2014use god forts\u00e4ttning<\/em> starting December 25 and keep it going in January until you start to notice that the Christmas decorations are coming down around town.<\/p>\n

And since there are still plenty of lights up, I\u2019ll follow my own advice\u2026 god forts\u00e4ttning<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

January is coming to a close and most everyone is back to work after having taken time off for the holidays here in Sweden. That won\u2019t stop you from hearing people greeting each other using the term god forts\u00e4ttning. It literally means good continuation as in a continuation of the holidays. It\u2019s a wonderful phrase…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":6846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3079,13],"tags":[130164,364872,34680],"class_list":["post-6839","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-swedish-language","category-vocabulary","tag-swedish-holidays","tag-swedish-language","tag-swedish-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6839","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\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6839"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6848,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6839\/revisions\/6848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}