Questions
Personal Pronouns
Here are the personal pronouns in Swedish:
| jag - I
| vi - we |
| du - you
| ni - you |
han - he
hon - she
| de - they |
Notes:
-Don't pronounce the 'g' in jag.
-De is pronounced /dom/.
-Ni is the polite form of 'you' (like French 'vous', German 'Sie',
Hungarian 'maga'), but nowadays the use of du is very widespread. So
there are no strict rules as in these other languages, and you are safe
with du unless you feel you need to show extra respect to someone.
Of course, ni is the normal form for 'you' when speaking to more
than one person.
Verbs
There are three categories of verbs in Swedish, each classified by the
type of verb stem. The first class of verbs is the most prevalent. The
stem of a verb in this class ends in -a. The stem is also the
infinitive (to do, to say...). You know the verb tala 'to speak' and
you learned last lesson that to form the present tense you just add
-r.
tala --> jag talar
to speak --> I speak
The second class of verbs includes those whose stems end in a
consonant. Many of the most common verbs fall into this class. For these
verbs, add an -a to form the infinitive and
-er to form the present tense. You know the verb komma 'to
come'.
komm- --> komma --> vi kommer
stem --> to come --> we come
The third class of verbs includes those whose stems end in a vowel other
then a. These verbs behave like those in the first class in the
present tense. The stem is the infinitive and the present tense is formed
simply by adding -r. You know the verb bo 'to live'.
bo --> de bor
to live --> they live
In future vocabulary lists, verbs will appear in their infinitive forms
with a slash at the end of the stem. So kommer would appear
komm/a, so you would know to drop the 'a' and add -er to form
the present tense (If I just gave komma, you wouldn't know whether to form
kommer or kommar). The verb tala would appear tala/
indicating that you only need to add -r to form the present.
Note: The verb är has an irregular infinitive (vara
- to be). Other irregular verbs will be covered in future
lessons.
Negative
To make a sentence negative in Swedish, just add the particle
inte after the verb.
-Kommer du från Sverige?
-Nej, jag kommer inte från Sverige.
-Varifrån kommer du?
-Jag kommer från Finland.
-Do you come from Sweden?
-No, I don't come from Sweden.
-Where do you come from?
-I come from Finland.
More sample sentences:
Hon talar inte engelska.
She doesn't speak English.
-Talar mannen svenska?
-Ja, han talar svenska.
-Does the man speak Swedish?
-Yes, he speaks Swedish.
Vi bor inte i New York.
We don't live in New York.
Vocabulary
Grammar
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