{"id":75,"date":"2008-09-12T23:57:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-13T03:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=75"},"modified":"2008-09-12T23:57:47","modified_gmt":"2008-09-13T03:57:47","slug":"swedish-verbs-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-verbs-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Verbs, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long, long time ago, I think in one of my earliest posts, I said that Swedish verbs are easier than English. And for the most part, that is indeed true. There is no goofy \u201c\u2013s\u201d in the third person singular, no irregular \u201cto be\u201d, the auxiliary \u201cdo\u201d is gone altogether, and \u201chave\/has\u201d is simply \u201c<strong>har<\/strong>\u201d. Easy peasy. For the most part.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest and probably most confusing difference is that in Swedish, the infinitive form of a verb (that would be the form preceded by \u201cto\u201d in English, the basic form you\u2019d find in a dictionary) is actually different from the form you would use when combined with a noun or a personal pronoun.<\/p>\n<p>It works like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>att jobba<\/strong> \u2013 to work<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>but<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jag jobbar.<\/strong> \u2013 I work, or &#8211; I am working.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s fairly easy from here on \u2013 you, he, she, we, you, they \u2013 are all followed by the same form \u201c<strong>jobbar<\/strong>\u201d.<br \/>\nAnd as you can see, there is only in present tense, which could be translated as either present simple, or present continuous (the one with the \u2013ing form) in English. It does make things a lot less complicated, wouldn\u2019t you say?<\/p>\n<p>For many, many verbs that\u2019s all you need to do to make their present tense forms. Just stick an \u2013r at the end of the infinitive and your work here is done.<\/p>\n<p>And quite logically, such verbs are called \u201c<strong>ar verbs<\/strong>\u201d. And they are mostly nice, regular verbs in all other tenses.<\/p>\n<p>There is another group, which through some very odd coincidence, for the most part (but not always) corresponds to irregular verbs in English. You know, those that get all funky in the past tense, like buy-bought-bought, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Those verbs in Swedish behave like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>att k\u00f6pa<\/strong> \u2013 to buy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>but<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jag k\u00f6per<\/strong>. \u2013 I buy, or \u2013 I am buying.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>See? Instead of tacking \u201cr\u201d at the end, first you remove the \u201ca\u201d of the infinitive, and then add \u201c<strong>er<\/strong>\u201d. Tah-dah! Done!<\/p>\n<p>Again, quite logically, these verbs are called \u201c<strong>er verbs<\/strong>\u201d. And for the most part, they are nasty, irregular little suckers in the past tense.<\/p>\n<p>There is a third group of short, little guys that behave in a whole different manner, and we will talk about them next time. For now, this is what you need to remember:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Some verbs acquire \u201cr\u201d at the end of their infinitive form and become \u201c<strong>ar<\/strong>\u201d verbs in the present tense. (<strong>\u201cAR\u201d VERBS<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li>And some verbs, FIRST drop the \u201ca\u201d of their infinitive form, and THEN add the ending \u201c<strong>er<\/strong>\u201d in the present tense. (<strong>\u201cER\u201d VERBS<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long, long time ago, I think in one of my earliest posts, I said that Swedish verbs are easier than English. And for the most part, that is indeed true. There is no goofy \u201c\u2013s\u201d in the third person singular, no irregular \u201cto be\u201d, the auxiliary \u201cdo\u201d is gone altogether, and \u201chave\/has\u201d is simply \u201char\u201d&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-verbs-part-1\/\">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":[364864,3356,166],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-grammar","tag-grammar","tag-present-tense","tag-verbs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","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=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}