{"id":7025,"date":"2015-09-29T12:51:12","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T12:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=7025"},"modified":"2015-09-29T12:51:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T12:51:12","slug":"exciting-swedish-dialects-grammatical-differences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/exciting-swedish-dialects-grammatical-differences\/","title":{"rendered":"Exciting Swedish dialects: Grammatical differences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally, learners of a second language like Swedish want to learn the standard version, which for Swedish as known as rikssvenska<\/em> or standardsvenska<\/em>. Yet, Sweden, being the long, vast country it is, has numerous dialects spoken in all the different parts of the country — some big, some small. So even if your goal is to be proficient in standard Swedish, it is a good idea to understand how Swedish dialects can vary.<\/p>\n

Dialects in general can differ in many ways: pronunciation, vocabulary, even grammar. Within each of these categories are various subcategories. Here, you can read all about how Swedish dialects differ in terms of grammar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In Uppland, the municipality hosting the city of Uppsala, the dialect spoken is called uppl\u00e4ndska<\/em>. In Standard Swedish<\/strong>, the word var<\/em> means “where” in the sense of static location.\u00a0Vart<\/em>, on the other hand, asks for direction, as in “to where”. Compare:<\/p>\n

Var<\/em><\/span> \u00e4r mataff\u00e4ren?<\/em> – Where<\/span> is the grocery store?
\nVart<\/em><\/span> \u00e5ker ni p\u00e5 semester?<\/em> – (To) where<\/span> are you going on vacation\/holiday?<\/p>\n

In Uppland<\/strong>, you will often hear vart<\/em> used for both of these:<\/p>\n

Vart<\/span> \u00e5ker ni p\u00e5 semester?<\/em> \u2013 but also:
\nVart<\/span> \u00e4r mataff\u00e4ren?<\/em><\/p>\n

(More about “where” here!<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In many parts of Norrland<\/strong> (dialect norrl\u00e4ndska<\/em>), predicative adjectives are not declined in plural. In other words, an adjective’s form does not change when it is not accompanied by a noun or article. For example:<\/p>\n

Jag hittade kl\u00e4nningarna. De<\/strong> var fin<\/span><\/strong>.
\n<\/em>I found the dresses. They<\/strong> were pretty<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

In the example, fin<\/em> is not changed to its Standard Swedish plural form fina<\/em> \u2013 it remains in its non-changed form fin<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Various parts of, for example, Uppland<\/strong>, G\u00e4strikland<\/strong>, where the city of G\u00e4vle is located, and\u00a0N\u00e4rke<\/strong>, where the city of \u00d6rebro is located, present a particular deviation from the standard language. Some weak verbs in these parts are declined as strong verbs \u2013 this means that rather than using the Standard Swedish way of adding something to the end of the verb to make it past tense, the central vowel of the verb is changed for this function. This applies primarily to verbs of Germanic\/Nordic origin. For example:<\/p>\n

Sofie tr\u00f6ck<\/span> p\u00e5 knappen.<\/em> \u2013 Sofie pressed<\/span> the button.
\nHuset l\u00f6s<\/span> i m\u00f6rkret.<\/em> \u2013 The house shone<\/span> in the dark.
\nSofie b\u00f6t<\/span> d\u00e4cken p\u00e5 bilen.<\/em> \u2013 Sofie switched<\/span> the tires of the car.<\/p>\n

Tr\u00f6ck<\/em>,\u00a0l\u00f6s<\/em> and\u00a0b\u00f6t<\/em> are considered incorrect in Standard Swedish, but they are frequently used in the mentioned dialects. They are replacements for tryckte<\/em> (from\u00a0trycka<\/em> ‘push’), lyste<\/em> (from\u00a0lysa<\/em>, ‘shine’) and bytte<\/em> (from\u00a0byta<\/em> ‘switch\/change’), respectively. Interesting, huh?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What kind of Swedish do the Swedes you know speak? N\u00e4rkingska<\/em>? G\u00e4vlem\u00e5l<\/em>? Do they often use dialectal words you haven’t learnt? What kind of Swedish do you ultimately want to learn? Tell us about it in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normally, learners of a second language like Swedish want to learn the standard version, which for Swedish as known as rikssvenska or standardsvenska. Yet, Sweden, being the long, vast country it is, has numerous dialects spoken in all the different parts of the country — some big, some small. So even if your goal is…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[364877,3079,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7025","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-pronunciation","category-swedish-language","category-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025","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\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7026,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions\/7026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}