Learn Swedish

Swedish Words for Work, and How to Use Them Like so many others right now, over the last few months I’ve once again found myself searching for a job. Having moved to Sweden just over a year ago, this is a pretty big challenge. Part of the reason I started this blog has been as a way to structure my Swedish study to quickly get up to a work-fluent level. As this has been a looming topic on my mind, I naturally started to wonder about the different Swedish words and phrases for work, jobs, and employment. This one has …

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Swedish words and phrases to express “doing” something I’d like to talk about something I’ve struggled with as a Swedish learner, and that is how to translate (or when not to translate) phrases that contain the word “do”. At first glance this seems like an easy concept, but in English we unknowingly use the word “do” in many contexts where it either wouldn’t exist at all in Swedish, or would be replaced by a different word. Lately I’ve been listening to the phenomenal History of English Podcast by Kevin Stroud. (go check it out!) As so often happens, he brought …

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Understanding how to translate English quotes to Swedish If you’re like me, you’ve spent a ton of time building up your Swedish vocabulary. You’ve studied sentence structure, grammar, memorized those pesky “en or ett” words, and you’re feeling pretty good about yourself. When you build up the confidence to finally talk to a native Swedish speaker, you get nothing but a blank stare. Maybe they’ll answer you… in English. This is the point I’ve become stuck in my learning, and I’ve finally figured out what is going on. Even though what I’ve said is technically correct, I may be translating …

Read moreEnglish Movie Quotes in Swedish

Basic Swedish phrases to help you learn faster. I’d like to do a bit of a different post today. It’s fun to keep moving on to advanced material, but sometimes it helps to take a break and do a review of the basics. This helps as a refresher on words and phrases you may have forgotten, learned new contexts for, or maybe skipped by without fully understanding. It’s also a nice confidence boost to realize how easy it is to read text that just a few short months ago you probably struggled through. These are some common Swedish phrases that …

Read moreTop 10 Swedish phrases to help you study

Hey all! I’ve gone down another rabbit hole of Swedish words while I was studying, and wanted to share my findings with you. Today’s topic will be on the origins of words relating to “solve, solution, and setting loose”. The ultimate goal is to be able to build up a larger vocabulary by knowing the roots of a few simpler words. As always, I’m not a professional and am still learning Swedish myself. Sometimes these posts are me thinking out loud and making connections as I study, so please jump in with corrections! Swedish word origins The first building block …

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Hey all! I’m back with another Swedish word breakdown post today. This one will be a bit shorter and lighter one the history, but I’ll make up for it next time with a dive into French influences on Swedish, and how to recognize what language a Swedish word likely comes from.

Hej allihopa! Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the awesome response to these super nerdy English to Swedish etymology posts. I really didn’t expect that many people to enjoy them, but I will definitely keep writing more! I hope it helps your progress in learning Swedish as much as it does mine. Yesterday I posted about various words relating to writing, scratching, cutting things. I realized those only scratched the surface (hah!), so I want to continue that theme with another cluster of words that still come from the same roots, but relate more to cutting in the sense …

Read moreShips, Friendships, and Landscapes