Svenska {Swedish}

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Så, du vill lära dig svenska?

So, you want to learn swedish?

Okay, so you want to learn Swedish. That’s great! Swedish is a beautiful language, much underrated and overlooked by prospective language students. The beauty of the scandinavian languages is that they are mutually intelligible; that is to say that if you speak swedish to a norwegian person who speaks norwegian back to you, it is perfectly possible for you to understand each other without much difficulty. When putting this to the test, however, please remember that the insular scandinavian languages (Icelandic and Faroese) have been developing much slower and without as much influence from mainland germanic languages (such as English and German), and as such are exempt. Also, though Finland is part of scandinavia, Finnish is baltic language, not a scandinavian one. So, basically, it only really applies to Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. But it‘s still special.
As a northern germanic language, it is still possible in Swedish to see the influence of Old and Middle German, as well as the many English loanwords in modern everyday use (for example, 'att SMS:a', 'to text'). But the scandinavian peninsula still has a very unique culture and language of its own, it is said that behind England and the USA, Sweden produces the best music in the world - and this is possibly true. Given the musical nature of the language, and the fact that everything in Sweden seems to be constantly whirring, buzzing or clicking in time to some sort of beat, it seems only natural that music should spring from that. Of course, the most famous musical export from Sweden is ABBA; following their success on the Eurovision Song Contest way back in 1974, the group rose to worldwide stardom. I recommend trying to find some of their songs in Swedish (they are out there!) on iTunes or whatever it is you krazy kidz are using nowadays. Or if you're into more contemporary music (which is probable), check out Säkert!, they're an up-and-coming swedish band with some fun songs with easy lyrics. x3
In terms of actually learning the language, there are lots of useful tips I can give you. Try and practise as much as you can, that‘s what this thread is for, and there‘s quite a big Swedish community on Gaia - it shouldn‘t be difficult to find someone to practise with. Also, that‘s what this thread is for! So go wild.
I‘m also happy to answer individual questions by PM. I‘m not that scary, so just drop me a line. If I have time I‘ll hang about in the threads to practise with you all, too. You should remember that I‘ve only lived in Sweden for about three months at this point, so I‘m still learning myself. But I have more than enough knowledge to teach you all the basics, and I can do it from a learner‘s perspective. So hopefully that should help you.

What I Expect From You & Homework Policy
I would like to think that as a student, you will make your own notes and try to practise as much as you can, but I understand that that may not actually happen. At the very least, I would like you to make a list of all vocabulary given to you, because it will only be given once. Everything I say in Swedish will have been listed in a brief vocabulary list at the end of each lesson, so I really don’t want to have people asking me what words mean every five seconds - all new vocabulary will be in the lists. Got it? Good.
And yes, there‘s Homework. There‘ll be a few questions at the end of each lesson. As I‘m doing this to help you, I really don‘t appreciate being messed about - if you don‘t want to do the exercises, then I‘m not going to force you. All I‘m saying is that it helps, regular practise will help you get to grips with the language.
What you need to do is PM your answers to me, and I‘ll send them back with any corrections or further questions (if you‘re doing particularly well). I also don‘t appreciate being bugged about it - I have a life, I have university work to do myself, I don‘t really want to spend it all at a computer marking Swedish homework. Not yet, anyway. So yes - I‘m happy to do it, but you have to give me a little time. Okay? Also, please put the assignment number in the PM title - just so I know.
This thread is for you to practise with other students - and me, if I‘m around. The lessons will be in the posts which have the ‘ornate‘ framing, so they‘ll be pretty easy to spot.

Lessons Currently Available:

• Lesson 1: Saying 'Hello', 'Goodbye' and Introducing Yourself -> click.
• Lesson 2: Saying how you are and what you like to do in your free time -> click.

Current Students:

• Winkpolve_
• XWraith_LordX
• Daionii
• GabzZZZzzipan
• dazzlejstar
• frozennight
• Fjandinn

 

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Lololololol.

Lesson 1

The Basics

Saying “Hello“, “Goodbye“ and Introducing Yourself
I‘m about to teach you the second most important word you‘ll ever learn in Swedish, ever. It‘s very simple, but you have to remember it. It‘s ‘hej‘. This is how Swedes say hello, and it‘s pronounced practically identically to the english (or american if you‘re being picky) ‘hey‘. If you ever go to Sweden, you‘ll be saying this a hell of a lot. Okay, so lets get started with the lesson. I‘d like to introduce Timmy (see left). Timmy has gone to Sweden to study at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (often shortened to KTH, the royal institute of technology in English). While there, he decides it would be a good idea to talk to his Swedish flatmates and learn a bit more of the language (he bought a phrasebook at the airport and read it on the flight). We join him on moving in day...

• Timmy: Hej! Jag heter Timmy, vad heter du?
• Anna: Jag heter Anna. Varifrån kommer du?
• Timmy: Jag kommer ifrån England, varifrån kommer du?
• Anna: Jag kommer ifrån Sverige.

...right. Now lets get down to the business of grammar, if I can tear you away from the heated dialogue for a moment, let’s dissect it. After the usual ‘hej‘, Timmy said ‘jag heter Timmy‘. This common statement is made up of two important parts, the first person singular nominative pronoun is ‘jag‘. That‘s a fancy, grammatical way of saying that ‘jag‘ means ‘I‘. It‘s very important, remember it. I‘ll put it in the word list at the end, of course, so you should always have it written down when you‘re doing these lessons. The second word is a declined form of the verb ‘att heta‘. If you look in a dictionary, you would see this verb listed as ‘heta‘. This is the infinitive form, the added word ‘att‘ is the swedish equivalent of ‘to‘ - simply put, ‘att heta‘ literally means ‘to be called‘. Therefore, to decline it, we simply knock off the ‘-a‘ and add ‘-er‘. Jag heter Timmy. Easy as!
Next we have the question, ‘vad heter du?’. It doesn‘t take a genius to work out that this roughly means ‘what are you called?’. You‘ll notice that the verb is in the same place. In simple sentences such as these, the verb is always in second place, after the question word - in this case ‘vad‘ (’what‘). Therefore, it is easy to assume that ‘du‘ is the second person singular nominative pronoun, or ‘you‘ in english, when talking to one person that you know well. Timmy shouldn‘t really have used it there, since he didn‘t know Anna at all, but Swedes expect it from foreigners when they‘re just learning Swedish, so they tend to overlook it.
The most complicated bit of these sentences is probably the word ‘varifrån‘. This is an important word to know, it is a mash-up of the words ‘var’ (’where’) and ‘ifrån’ (’from in‘), and is peculiar to Swedish (Norwegian and Danish split it into their respective equivalents). The word literally means ‘from in where‘, even though ‘ifrån‘ is never really used on its own outside this context, and ‘from‘ in english is usually translated into swedish as ‘från‘. The easy bit is ‘att komma‘. It‘s basically exactly the same as ‘att heta‘, you drop the ‘-a‘ and add ‘-er‘. Simple! I‘ll add some more country words to the vocabulary list, just some basic ones - most of them are surrounding Sweden so if you‘re from outside there, just go to Wikipedia, search for your country and then translate the page into Swedish using the bar on the left of the screen - you‘ll need that for your homework!
Another lovely little word that you should know is ‘inte‘. This equates roughly to the english word ‘not‘, and you use it when you need to reply in the negative. For instance, if someone thinks your name is Steven, you can easily say ‘jag heter inte Steven, jag heter ’ to set them straight. In simple sentence constructions such as these, this always comes after the verb.
Please note that I‘ve included some other pronouns in the vocabulary list, just the words for ‘he‘, ‘she‘ and ‘we‘. The rest will follow in later exercises.
‘Goodbye‘ is just as easy as ‘hej‘, because sometimes that‘s exactly what it is. You can either say ‘hej då‘ when you‘re around friends or ‘hej‘, with ‘adjö‘ being a formal alternative.

Homework Questions
1. Translate the following into Swedish, substituting my information for your own.

• Hej! Jag heter Jonnie, jag kommer ifrån England. Hej då!

2. Translate the following sentences into English...

• Jag heter Jon, jag kommer ifrån Tyskland.
• Piérre kommer inte ifrån Island, han kommer ifrån Frankrike.

Vocabulary List

• Adjö -> Goodbye
• du -> you, second person singular nominative pronoun
• England -> England
• Frankrike -> France
• från -> from
• han -> he
• Hej! -> Hi!
• Hej då! -> See ya!
• (att) heta -> (to) be called
• hon -> she
• inte -> not
• Island -> Iceland
• jag -> I, first person singular nominative pronoun
• Kina -> China
• (att) komma -> (to) come
• Norge -> Norway
• Polen -> Poland
• Sverige -> Sweden
• Tyskland -> Germany
• USA -> USA
• vad -> what
• var -> where
• varifrån -> from where
• vi -> we