Swedish Grammar Basics

1.1 Introduction

The goal of this grammar introduction is to give you a solid foundation for your Swedish studies. The goal is NOT to bombard you with tons of information that will do nothing but confuse you and discourage you from keeping on.

This course will give you all the genuinely useful grammar knowledge without going into the nitty gritty advanced stuff you won't use anyway. Otherworldly phrases like the interjection is necessarily followed by punctuation, as with appositives, except when preceding a subordinate conjunction are banned from this course. We’re keeping it simple without taking away any value for you. You'll be sure to walk away from this course fully equipped to speak Swedish on a native level.

We know grammar can be challenging and tedious, but if you promise to stick with us throughout this course, we assure you that your Swedish learning will become much easier. At LingoGuru, we’re all about making language learning easy and fun, so let’s enjoy the ride together!

Dalahäst. “Dala horse,” a tradition of Swedish craftsmanship.

1.2 Alphabet

Let’s start at the very beginning (sung in an exuberant Julie Andrews voice). The Swedish alphabet is here below:

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo

Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Xx Yy Zz Åå Ää Öö

Most of it should look familiar to you. But what are those funky things at the end? Rings and dots above the A’s and O’s? Who’d ever think of such a thing? Why couldn’t you just keep it simple, Swedish?

It turns out that Swedish is a very vowel-rich language, which essentially means we like to make funny sounds with our mouths wide open. Å, Ä, and Ö are all additional vowels that don’t really have any equivalents in English. The audio below introduces these sounds to you. In Swedish, there are long and short versions of every vowel. The audio repeats each sound, long and short, twice in the order Å, Ä, Ö.

1.3 Word order

Swedish is what linguists call an SVO language, just like English. This means that, in general, sentences are constructed with the subject first (e.g. mamma (mom)), the verb second (e.g. älskar (loves)), and the object last (e.g. glass (ice cream)).

Key: Subject | Verb | Object

Mamma älskar glass.

Mom loves ice cream.

There are a few quirks to this which we’ll cover more in depth later. For now, let’s just say that when following small phrases indicating a time, place, or description of the scene, the phrase is changed to VSO (similar to how it behaves in, for example, German). Examples are always easier:

Mamma äter glass.

Mom eats ice cream.

Varje dag äter mamma glass.

Everyday, mom eats ice cream.

När det regnar äter mamma glass.

When it rains, mom eats ice cream.

På jobbet äter mamma glass.

At work, mom eats ice cream.

I sin röda klänning äter mamma glass.

In her red dress, mom eats ice cream.

See that flip? It happens when a statement like "mom eats ice cream" is put after these small phrases explaining the circumstances of the action (the fancy word is adverbial). You'd most often put a comma (,) here in English, but Swedes has a deep aberration for commas, so you will see them a lot less frequently.

Another situation when the SVO order changes is in yes/no questions (the same as in English). If you ask a question looking for a yes or no answer, you have to flip the S and the V just like we did above:

Jag är hemma.

I am (at) home.

Är du hemma?

Are you (at) home?

1.4 Swedish words are sticky

In English, if you have two words, say concert and ticket, and you want to make them one word, you spell it out as concert ticket, simple as that. Essentially, this means that English words despise each other and want to stay far apart.

Swedish is a language of love and its words want to stick together. Thus, we get the formula

konsert + biljett = konsertbiljett (concert ticket)

This works to infinity! Sometimes, a tiny little -s- needs to be added between the words to glue them together completely.

fotboll + plan = fotbollsplan (football/soccer field)

katt + mat = kattmat (cat food)

skola + mat + sal = skolmatsal (school cafeteria/school food hall)

motor + cykel + däck + gummi = motorcykeldäcksgummi (the rubber of a motorbike tire)

In fact, words can have completely different meanings if they're written together or apart, and there's a long list of unfortunate (or hilarious) misinterpretations that arose from what we call särskrivningar, words that people wrote separately although they should've been together.

Snälla hjälp vår kassapersonal. - Please help our cashiers.

Snälla hjälp vår kassa personal. - Please help our crappy staff.

Vi vill bara ha en svensklärare. - We only want a Swedish teacher (someone eligible to teach Swedish).

Vi vill bara ha en svensk lärare. - We only want a Swedish teacher (someone who is Swedish by nationality).

herrbastu - men's sauna

herr bastu - Mr. Sauna

Those are the very basics to get us started. Next, we'll move on to a fundamental part of any language: its pronouns!

Are you ready to ace the Swedish game? Tell us in the comments how you're feeling!