Swedish Lessons

Yeah, tons of people have problems with that sound if they’re not originally from Sweden. Trying to think of a sound like that in english, or at least a similar sound, but I can’t really come to think of any… “Sk” can also be pronounced as the same sound, for example in “skillnad” or “skön”

When me and my family first came to sweden they spelled my name like “Olesja”, cause, well, they thought it would be “Oles-ja” but instead it turned my name into this horrible “Olescha” or something lol. Now it’s just Olesia, thank God lol.

Dream on. // Olesia

I can’t get my microphone to work :sad: But I wouldn’t be a good person to teach people how to say “sj” because I tend to say it wrong sometimes. My mother comes from Finland, so I learnt finnish first as a child. And finnish does not have any “sj” sounds, except some similar sounds in loan words. Like “sheikki” (sheik, shejk in swedish).

When I just had started school some other kids picked on me because i couldn’t pronounce “tjuv” (theif) or “sju” (seven). :bored:

I actually borrowed a microphone from a friend, but it turns out that my sound card sucks, so I can’t use it. It shouldn’t be that hard to find a recording of someone saying “tjuv” or “sjuk” etc… I would have looked for one now, but right now I’m on this 3G-card, so my connection is super-slow. Unless someone else finds one, I’ll look for one when I get back to my mom’s, that’ll be around monday or tuesday (I think).

Here you can type in swedish words to hear how to pronounce them, but the sound quality isn’t so good, so it’s hard to hear the sj sounds.

chemistry in Swedish:

Na= Natrium
He=Helium
H=väte
Cl=Klor
Au=Guld
Pb=bly
Pt=platina
Cu=koppar
P=fosfor
F=flour
(Sn=Tenn?)
Zn=Zink
C=kol
Li=litium
Ag=Silver

My chemistry teacher’s name is Zink. :shock:

Time for Lanina’s Grammar! :tongue:

Words in plural.

In english, a s is just added when it comes to plural.
“Pig - Pigs”
There are some words that are different, like
“Man - Men”

In swedish, it’s a bit more difficult.
Most words get a r when talking about a substantive in plural.
But, most words also end in consonants, how does this work?
It goes [vowel]+r.
What vowel is usually determined by what the last letter in the word is. And some you just have to learn.

-OR
Examples: Kvinna (woman), hylla (shelf), panna (forehead)
Most words in this group ends with an A.

These words will have -or in plural.
So:
En kvinna
Flera kvinnor

En hylla
Två hyllor

Some words that end with consonants are also here, like “ros” (rose).

-AR
All words in this group are words that are “n-words”, so that its “en pingvin” (a pinguin) or “en stol” (a chair) not words like “ett bord” (a table)

Example:

En fågel (a bird)
Flera fåglar (many birds)

En pojke (a boy)
Två pojkar (two boys)

There are some wierd things here too. Some words change more than just putting -ar after them. Words like “dotter” (daughter) becomes “döttrar”.

-ER
Most words in this group are also “n-words”. There are many words here that that end in e-[consonant] like “regel” (rule)
Before you can put -er on them, you have to take the last vowel out. So it becomes “regler” instead of “regeler” (easier to say).

Examples:

Film - Filmer (film, films)
Bok - Böcker (book, books)
Växt - Växter (plant, plants)


There are more groups, but I will write about them later. :razz:
Like -R, -N and words that do not change at all.

And how are we supposed to know what n-words are? Is there any logic in that?

Is it also
en film - two filmer (a film, two films)
en Bok - two böcker (a book, two books)?

chemistry in Swedish looks much like Dutch.

Na= Natrium [com] = Natrium [/com]
He=Helium [com] = helium[/com]
H=väte [com]= waterstof [/com]
Cl=Klor [com]= chloor [/com]
Au=Guld [com]= goud [/com]
Pb=bly [com]= lood [/com]
Pt=platina [com]= platina [/com]
Cu=koppar [com]= koper [/com]
P=fosfor [com]= fosfor [/com]
F=flour [com] = fluor [/com]
(Sn=Tenn?) [com] = tin [/com]
Zn=Zink [com] = zink [/com]
C=kol [com]= koolstof [/com]
Li=litium [com]= litium [/com]
Ag=Silver [com]= zilver [/com]

Owh yeha that’s rigth we had Swedish lessons, not Dutch.

I don’t think there is any logic. Most words a “n-words”. Maybe someone else has posted something earlier in this thread?
Swedes mostly just go for what sounds good. :razz:

Well, I’m lazy today. I’m going to write about words that do not change at all in plural.
Most of these words are words for professions ending on -re
Lärare = Teacher
Slaktare = Butcher
Musiker = Musician

Then, there are just some randoms words.
Träd = Tree
Lejon = Lion
Fönster = Window

I can understand why it’s hard to put a suffix on words ending on -re, but why it’s “ett träd, två träd” instead of “ett träd, två trädar” is just weird. :eh:

I skipped a few pages so I don’t know if any of these words have been written before.

Toalett = Toilet
Badrum = Bathroom
Mat = Food
Vatten = Water
Öl = Beer
Vin = Wine
Hem = Home (Weak E)
Trött = Tired
Sjuk = Sick, ill.
Säng = Bed (Weak Ä)
Kamera = Camera (Strong A)
Jul = Xmas, Christmas.
Jultomten = Santa Claus
Tomtefar = Father Christmas
Påsk = Easter
Huvudvärk = Headache
Tandvärk = Toothache
Bio = Cinema
Mobil = Cellphone
Bil = Car
Cykel = Bike
Motorcykel = Motorbike
Förstörd = Destroyed, ruined.
Pengar = Money

In Swedish there aren’t AM or PM when you talk about the time. Instead of 1-12, we have 1-24. So 10 PM would be 22.00.

Currency, SEK (Swedish Kronor - KR).
1$ = 6kr (I think)

OFF-TOPIC:

I always thought Santa Claus and Father Christmas was the same!

ON-TOPIC:
Emm-------Jag är en svamp!
runs

Is anyone still teaching/learning here? (probably not, since the last post was in 2007 :tongue:)

Is there logic to it in other languages? Grammatical gender is fairly new to me, since we don’t have that in English (afaik).

From an earlier post, -en words are for male or female, while -ett words are for neutral.

If so, then is the -OR, -AR, -ER rule related to gender? Like -OR is for female, -AR for male, and -ER for inanimate male/female or something? :confused:

Also wondering this too, and if there’s something like a BIG language topic to link to all the lessons :peek:

[size=75](I don’t remember what I was searching for when I found this… Hope it’s not against the rules, from my understanding the Bumping rule referred to just saying “Bump” to an old thread with no actual content?)[/size]

As far as I recall … the only other topic was on the Nederlands LD4all forum. It was a speak Dutch topic.

If members wish, I can edit links into the “what languages do you speak” topic in the gathering.

That would be nice :smile: This is just a suggestion though, in case people would want to share their languages, since this is an international forum. Not sure if others would be interested in this.

On Swedish topic, I had two dreams involving Swedish these past two nights/mornings. One was about this thread in particular, and I was called Ålot (that is not how it’s supposed to be pronounced though).

On this thread topic, adding a new lesson! (Hope that any people fluent who are still active will be able to correct me)

In English, we have “the” to denote a distinct noun. For example, “the man” has a slightly different meaning than “a man”. “The man” means mean we are talking about a specific man, while “a man” just means any man in general.

In Swedish, they also have this same concept, however instead of adding a word like “the” they add “en” or “et” (or a variation) to the end of the word.

En words
A man = En man
The man = Mannen

A woman = En kvinna
The woman = Kvinnan (just add -n here, since kvinna ends with an “a”)

A island = En ö
The island = Ön (I guess just add -n if the word already ends with a vowel?)

Ett words
A table = Ett bord
The table = Bordet

A child = Ett barn
The child = Barnet

Water = Vatten
The water = Vattnet (I guess this is irregular)

There is no gender logic of the ends -EN -ON -AN what I know, you have to learn each one of them for each word, same goes for en and ett before the words :razz:

Good to know :razz:

Lesson on countries and languages
Unlike English, names of countries are capitalized, but languages, people and adjectives are generally not capitalized unless they are the first word of a sentence.

Sweden - Sverige
Swede (person) - svensk or svenskare (?)
Swedish (language) - svenska
Swedish (adjective) - svensk / svenskt / svenska (note: use subject-adjective agreement)

A Swedish person from Sweden who speaks Swedish is a Swede.
En svensk person från Sverige som talar svenska är en svenskare.

Place person language adjective
Finland finsk or finlandare (?) finska finsk / finskt / finska
Norige norsk norska norsk / norskt / norska
Tyskland tysk tyska tysk / tyskt / tyska
Nederländerna holländare holländska holländsk / holländskt / holländska
Storbritannien engelsman engelska engelsk / engelskt / engelska
Spanien spanjor spanska spansk / spanskt / spanska
Italien italienare italienska italiensk / italienskt / italienska
Frankrike fransman franska fransk / franskt / franska
Grekland grekisk grekiska grekisk / grekiskt / grekiska
Ryssland ryss ryska rysk / ryskt / ryska
Polen pol polska polsk / polskt / polska
Kina kines kinesiska kinesisk / kinesiskt / kinesiska

Another interesting thing about swedish is that to some extent, it is a tonal language.

A few examples:

Tomten - The yard/garden
Tomten - The gnome/Santa Claus

Anden - The duck
Anden - The spirit/genie

Buren - The cage
Buren - Carried/worn

Backen - The crate/reverse gear
Backen - The slope

Intonation also plays into swedish particle verbs:

Ta på hatten - Put on the hat
Ta på hatten - Touch the hat

Jag kom på en sak - I thought of something/had an idea
Jag kom på en sak - I came on a thing

Jag körde över tomten - I drove across the yard
Jag körde över tomten - I ran over Santa

So you don’t get different regional tonal variations?

Regional accents do have different prosodic patterns.
For example, you can usually tell by the melody of someone’s speech if they are from the southern county SkÃ¥ne, even if they don’t use the distinctive diphthongs and guttural R’s of that region.

But I don’t think these words get confused because of that.
Nobody would stress the last syllable of “anden” when referring to a duck. :smile: