Svenska {Swedish}

[iMummitroll]

Lesson 2
Basic Conversation

Saying how you are
Right. Now it's time to teach you your first irregular verb. This one can be tricky if English isn't your first language, because it seems to follow the same pattern as its english equivalent. That word is att vara, 'to be'. If one wants to say, 'I am...', they would simply say jag är. This is the same for any of the pronouns, there's none of that english 'is', 'are', 'am' distinction. It's 'är' all the way along. (: It's irregular because this word seems to have no resemblance to the root - which is true, I suppose. But it's just one of those things you need to know. I'll leave it there for now, we'll tackle the past tense at a later date. The next verb you need to know is att må, which is difficult to translate into English. It's something like 'to be doing', or 'to be feeling'. So for instance, if I said 'hur mår du?', I'd be saying 'how are you doing?'. (: Get it? You'll notice that the ending for the present tense is different for this verb to the way it was for 'att komma' and 'att heta'. There's no hard and fast rule for this, but one I'm going to stick to for now is that because it's only short and has only one syllable, you only need to add the '-r' - 'måer' or 'måar' is completely incorrect. Lets go back to Timmy and Anna, to see how it's done.

• Timmy: Så, hur mår du?
• Anna: Jag mår bra, tack. Själv?
• Timmy: Jag mår bra också tack, men jag är lite trött.

Okay. Lots of new vocabulary there, lets go through it. (: The first word you'll notice that I've been using a lot this lesson is hur. This simply translates to 'how', and is very important. So remember it. The next one which will have excited the less mature of you is bra. This means 'good' or 'well', and comes up a lot in Swedish. It's the same in Norwegian and (as I understand it) Danish too, so there's no escaping it in Scandinavia. It's a handy little word to know. And then there's själv. Now, this is a good word to know (if a little difficult to pronounce - but don't worry about that just yet. I'm going to wait until you can introduce yourselves and have a bit of basic conversation before I start on pronunciation). It means 'self', but it can also mean 'by yourself', 'yourself?' and basically any other variation. In this context you could easily just use 'och du?', but I'd like to use 'själv' as much as possible to give you some sort of feel for how it should be used. The second adjective in the little conversation is of course trött. This means 'tired', and if you stay up as late as I do you'll probably need this one quite a lot. I'll give you a few more adjectives in the vocabulary list at the end, but there are bound to be more during the course of the lesson.

Saying what you like to do in your free time
Right, this is when it gets a little tricky. I say a little, I mean a lot. I'm also going to teach you two little but very important words. They are på and i. 'På' means 'on', usually, but it's also used to mean 'in' quite a lot of time, and sometimes 'to', and 'i' means 'in'. The word for 'free time' is very simple, you just shove the words for 'free' and 'time' together to make the word fritid. Because it is basically a variation on the word tid, it is a masculine noun - which is not so important at the moment, because I'm just teaching you the phrase itself, but it'll be important later so please make a note of it on your word list - and that makes the word for 'my' become min (there are different variations on this word depending on which gender the noun it describes is - more on this later). So to say 'in my freetime', you would say i min fritid, right? Wrong. Just to make it extra confusing, the swedes say 'on my freetime'. So there. På min fritid.
This is where I have to touch on word order again. This will become tedious and complicated and I'm sorry in advance, but it's just something you have to know. I think I've said before that in simple sentences such as these, the verb always comes in second place. This is true - but that doesn't mean that the verb is always the second word. It means that it comes after a pronoun or a time expression, which is exactly what på min fritid is. So if you were to take the verb att tycka om, which means 'to like' (in a round about sort of way), this would go after the time expression. But the pronoun is also complicated - you need to shove it in between the words tycka (meaning 'to think' or 'to be of the opinion' when on its own) and om (meaning 'about' or 'if' when on its own), because 'tycka om' is a phrase verb, a variation on the verb 'att tycka'.
I know this is very complicated. It feels it as I'm writing it - if you understand it, good for you, but I'm going to give some examples. In fact, lets join Timmy again, as he gets to know Anna a little better...

• Timmy: Så vad tycker du om att göra på din fritid?
• Anna: Jag tycker om att lyssna på musik, eller läsa böcker. Jag tycker om att gå på parken med min pojkvän också. Du, då?
• Timmy: På min fritid tycker jag om att läsa böcker, och spela piano. Jag älskar att gå på bio, också.

Hell of a lot of new vocabulary there, so we'd better get started... xD Right. So I hope you noticed the way the sentences were structured? There a question word, time phrase or pronoun before the main verb of the sentence every time. I think the first new word there was att göra... this means 'to do' or 'to make', this one is complicated and there'll probably be a whole section on it later on. So don't worry too much about it. The next one was att lyssna, meaning 'to listen'. Musik obviously means 'music', and it's a masculine noun, so make a note of that too. It's very important to learn nouns with their genders, otherwise you'll just be very confused later on. The next one was att gå, which, although pronounced the same as the english 'go', and often translated as that, is not exactly the same. 'Gå' refers exclusively to walking, or travelling by foot. You're welcome to say that 'du går på Paris', but if you live in Sweden it may be quite a long walk. Which is why here, Anna says 'gå på parken', which means 'walk in the park' (park is a masculine noun, meaning exactly what it says on the tin. So make a note of that one too). She elaborates on this point, however, she doesn't go to the park on her own. She says 'med min pojkvän', which has two words you won't know. Med simply means 'with', and a pojkvän is a boyfriend (a flickvän is a girlfriend, but these terms are exclusive to romantic attachments, not 'a friend who is a boy / girl'. They are both masculine nouns). But that's enough about Anna, what about Timmy? Well Timmy likes many of the same things - they both say that they like to 'läsa böcker'. Att läsa is simple, it means 'to read', and you can probably guess the next word (bok is the word for 'book' - it's a masculine noun - and this is an irregular plural - but again, unfortunately something you've just got to know). The next one is att spela, a useful one if you're into video games, music or sports. It means 'to play', and can be used in any of the aforementioned contexts. I'll add more words at the end so your answers can be original. However, it does not apply to children - if children are playing 'house' or whatever, then that's a different word. But again, that isn't particularly relevant at the moment. Last two! Att älska - to love. Lovely word, it's restricted to romantic pairs, extremely close friends, and things you really really enjoy doing. Where does Timmy enjoy going? På bio, of course. This is short for something, but it isn't really worth saying what for - I guarantee that most Swedes don't really know themselves and no one ever says it. It means 'cinema'.

Phew. That was arduous! Bit of a long lesson, too. I'm going to draw it to a close now, set you your homework questions and write the word list. My arms are going to drop off. I hope this was more useful than the last one, though - I thought there was more information in it until I struggled to write 3 homework questions on it. xD

Homework Questions
1. Translate the following sentences into English:

• Hej! Jag heter Anders, jag kommer ifrån Norge. Jag mår bra, men lite trött.
• Jag älskar att lyssna på musik med min flickvän.
• Jag är hungrig!

3. Vad tycker du om att göra på din fritid?

Vocabulary List

• Bio (noun) -> Cinema
• Bok (noun, masc.) -> Book
• Bra (adj.) -> Good, Well
• Flickvän (noun, masc.) -> Girlfriend
• Fri (adj) -> Free
• Fritid (noun, masc.) -> Free / Leisure time
• [att] gå (verb) -> [to] go by foot
• [att] göra (verb) -> [to] do, make
• hur -> how
• i (prep.) -> in
• [att] läsa (verb) -> [to] read
• med -> with
• musik (noun, masc.) -> music
• [att] må (verb) -> [to] be doing, to be feeling
• om -> about, if
• park (noun, masc.) -> park
• piano (noun, masc.) -> piano
• pojkvän (noun, masc.) -> boyfriend
• på (prep.) -> on, in, to, at
• sjuk (adj.) -> sick, ill
• själv -> self
• [att] spela (verb) -> [to] play
• tid (noun, masc.) --> time
• trött (adj.) -> tired
• [att] tycka (verb) -> [to] think, be of the opinion
• [att] tycka om (verb) -> [to] like
• [att] vara (verb) -> [to] be
• [att] älska (verb) -> [to] love