I would say it's impossible to fully blend in.

Well I think it has to do with dialects and even their influence og high swedish. Sometimes the abbreviations can be different from city to city. This can be the truth in the UK as well, but I'm not sure if the difference in the US is that large except on a regional level

@@cargobob7817 More or less impossible if you come here as an adult. It might be possible, but I have not seen an example of it yet.

I'd say it's the same for Amurican English. At least where I'm from, there's so much slang and so many idioms that I think it's very difficult for a non-native speaker to fully comprehend.

@@charlies.5777 It's the pitch accent and specific sounds that are difficult with Swedish. There are of course idioms and some words but that is the same with every language.

pakkoruotsi funkar int..hälsningar: rannikkohurrista =)

Ja

Yeah English and Swedish have a lot in common

Yes this is indeed true, because Swedish has more similarities with English and the amount of resources for learning swedish in english i assume is going to be larger than in finnish. Knowledge of english would help you a lot in learning swedish as a Finn. I noticed too that sometimes i need to change my mindset if i want to learn a language, like for learning german it's easier to start from "dutch" i feel, while for romance languages, due to the amount of resources, it might be easier in english. English also has a lot of shared vocabulary but having knowledge of two languages also helps me a lot. It's easier to learn a third language if you know two languages, than outright learning a second one and so on, because you're more familiar with the process of language learning and might have knowledge of more cognates.

​@@Lakigigar what other language do you speak?

The pitch accent is the different accents required for Swedish words like "anden" (the duck) and "anden" (the spirit). The difference is subtle, but extremely obvious to a native Swedish speaker. And hard to master for anyone who didn't grow up with Swedish, I'm sure.

That's true, I have a friend who I thought was born and raised in Sweden until I noticed the way he pronounced/pitched* some words. I asked him about it and he came to Sweden five years ago. *pitched = "betonade" in swedish

@@haalloondricka Yes, I found it a bit surprising that Stefan didn't mention pitch accent since I'm sure that can be quite difficult to master. Translating it simply as "betona" though might create some confusion for some readers thinking it has to do with emphasis. So to clear that up I just wanted to write that differently to emphasis (which both English and Swedish has), pitch accent also has to do with tones that vary in pitch and length in different patterns. Emphasis happens mostly on a sentence structure level, whilst pitch accent happens in a single word.

@@annsidbrant7616 Isn't 'ankan' duck? 'En anka' is a duck & 'ankan' is the duck?

@@brigidspencer5123 Exactly. And "anka" is a two-syllable word with pitch accent 2. But "and" is another word for "anka". And "and" is a one-syllable word with pitch accent 1.

I'm learning Norwegian now. Pronunciation is way more complex and difficult to learn. I have a hard time understanding each word spoken in a sentence.

I spent an year learning Swedish, getting the basics down is easy except finding content to become perfect is impossible

english speakers say Ö all the time, for example O in Customer, it's really Custömer.

@@maxysurvivorsucks That's true :)

That only gives you one of the two pronunciations of "ö", although, if you're from one of the larger cities and under 30, chances are that's your only "ö". In modern Swedish, one variant of "ö" is used before "r" and another is used in all other instances (but again, if you're a younger speaker from a major city, the first kind is likely your only "ö"). The first is formed more towards the back of your mouth with the lips more relaxed and open, while the other is more fronted, with lips more tense. To speakers whose speech has both variants (most people outside larger cities and almost everyone over 40), they sound quite distinct, but younger speakers might not even be able to tell them apart unless they make an effort. There is no equivalent sound in English to the second variant of "ö".

Österberg, ett berg åt öst. Btw my name is another example of that, Sjöström

And in "can" you say Ä. so "cän" (if you´re using American english)

So happy you find it interesting ☺️🙏🏼

Even more funny when you are swedish

Where are you from? And I are you know korean! Me too

@@AmogusSusAmongusSussyBakaAmogg Which I am

@@fae.bae.._ najs

Yes, Stefan could interview the English TV gardener John Taylor who speaks a funny sort of Scanian dialect.

Go far enough down and you stand out with the skåne accent, far up enough and you stand out from the local north swedish/bondska accents, you'd stand out like a sore thumb

Miranda, there are a lot of words that are “the same” in Swedish and English. Cat - Katt Foot - Fot Hand - Hand Hungry - Hungrig If you observe this it should be a great help I believe. Does not help you with grammar of course but it should enable a kickstart.

Welcome to Sweden :)

Welcome here :) hope u will enjoy the country

Check out TheSwedishLad - he's done videos of Swedish vocabulary for years :3

I hope you like out country!!!

Hahah, satt och tänkte på det!

Feel Good : inte så lätt ändå fan 😁♥️ Man måste väl nästan ha sjungit bokstavslåtar på dagis för att veta ordningen 😃

ÅÄÖ. in Norway they say ÆØÅ

Yes I can tell this letter is in Swedish mr president, lots of ös and äss in it.

ÄÅÖ hurt my eyes 😂🙈

I am Swedish. Have lived in Skåne close to Denmark for 8 years now. I cannot for the life of me understand a single word of Danish...

@@charliekoohler4774 Du forstår ikke et af hvad jeg skriver nu?

@@schnelltv1956 Skrift jo. Jag menade talspråk.

@@charliekoohler4774 Det kræver øvelse for begge parter. Efter at have hørt svensk hver dag i nogle måneder kan jeg forstå 80-100% Før kunne jeg forstå omkring 40-60%

In fact, all three Scandinavian languages can be seen as dialects of the same language.

Did it say Swedish only please or Svenska bara tack?

@@catholicdad Jag vet inte

I worked in an American Food store for a while. I had one 10 year old guy wander in and his English was the best I'd ever heard for someone his age. As good as my husband's. I complimented him and asked if he had an American parent or something. He gave me the biggest grin and said, "No. KZfaq game streams!"

English is everywhere though, hard to miss it.

How do you learn a language undubbed I just don't understand that so you're saying I could learn Swedish by watching stuff undubbed?

@@PiterMaguire What I'm saying is that I grew up watching American movies. The Scandinavian countries are among the few countries in Europe that do not dub every foreign movie or Tv- show. This is why 98% of all Swedes are able to speak English without any issue as compared to Germany or Italy

@@PiterMaguire Also - Watching undubbed swedish movies now when you are in the age that you are in now will probably not help you much. I was 5 years old when I started watching american movies that my brother used to rent on VHS.

Ja man!!! Ik ga verhuizen naar srockholm één januari. Had een zweedse meid ontmoet maar ze wil me niet meer, heb nu in 3 maanden Zweeds geleerd, en de uitspraak is echt makkelijk als je het eenmaal onder de knie hebt. Ga nu zweedse video's maken op KZfaq en muziek zoals Antoon en Lil Kleine maken daar in zweden, hoop dat ik doorbreek en dat ze me terug wil. Ha det bra ;)

Cutelittle Trips Hahahah never heard anyone say that before😂

Haha I am Swedish and I never thought about it/that way

Meanwhile us Swedes think that Norweigans sound like they are singing

I have studied German for 6 months and living in sweden for eight years and I can tell german grammar is way harder than swedish. Altought, swedish pronunciation is harder than german.

I'm a native Swede and yes, I've heard that foreign people thinks it sounds like we sing when we speak, but I guess we don't realise it ourselfs XD As for German... I studied it in school from 6th grade until I finished gymnasiet... I'm still trying to learn it, since I have both friends and distant family in Germany... and to be honest, I still can't get Der Die Das right...

Almost impossible even.

No one cares though. We have so many immigrants that we're used to all sorts of accents. We're not language snobs like the French..!

Hello there teach me swedish

@@zlattesboy the ethnic variety represented in Mello over the years is perfect example: big ones for me being Loreen Talahoui(?) and Eric Saade. And that was 2 years in row. But then you have Mendez, Samir, Mohombi, Mr Fjallgren, etc.

@@stpatrickcentre7694 I can point you towards some resources if you're serious.

I'm curious about this, pitch accent is frequently mentioned in connection with Swedish in particular. In Italian we have the words ancora (accent on second syllable, meaning still or yet) and ancora (accent on first syllable, meaning anchor). Is this an example of pitch accent? Even after reading about it I'm a bit confused about the difference between pitch accent and "stress". Clearly, Swedish is not a tonal language, in the sense that for example Thai (5 tones IIRC) or Ga (officially 2 tones) are. I'll limit myself to Ga, since I am more familiar with it. In Ga tone is a part of the syllable, so 'la' can mean blood, fire, dream, to sing, depending on the context and whether you say it with a low or high tone. Then there is the La part of Accra, so you can throw in one other meaning as well. I wrote that Ga officially has two tones. I'm not expert on such matters, but if Iisten to a language like Yoruba, which I don't know very well, to my ears it seems to be a very "pure" tonal language. It has three tones, low, mid and high, you can think of these as do, re and mi. In Thai, Mandarin, etc., "tones" are actually tone shifts: rising, falling, etc., in addition to flat tones, i.e. low, medium and high. In Ga, the word for dog is 'gbee' (you produce the 'gb' sound by saying a 'b' sound but with the tongue in position for a hard g sound, it is not two sounds). Gbee is said to be a high tone sound, but it is actually more of a mid-to-high rising tone. In a language like Swedish (which I understand really well, but don't really speak), tone is clearly not significant at syllable level. It does matter in some cases, like stegen (the ladder) as opposed to stegen (the steps). Then again, it seems to do so in (at least some) other languages as well. Could somebody help clear this out: why is Swedish a 'pitch accent' language, but other languages are not?

​@@lorenzocabrini I wouldn't call sweden a pitch accent language. There are some words that have a pitch accent, like already mentioned- "tomten" and "stegen". But even without pitch accent you would in 99% still be able to figure out what word was meant based on the situation. Sentences like "Tomten är på tomten", (Santa is on the plot) is literally never used apart from examples. And even looking at the words with pitch accent, they are relatively few and it's not like there's entire sentences with different pitch accents. However one thing swedish definitly is, is a tonal language in the way that the swedish speech is very colourful and often compared to singing. I think that is one of the reasons why swedish is often seen as a pitch accent language, despite that apart from a few words, it really isnt.

@@paecmaker Thanks, your answer makes a lot of sense. I guess the term tonal language is quite broad and covers both languages in which tone carries meaning and languages which, as you point out, have a "singy" aspect to them. I still wonder if my own language has an aspect of tonality in it. We also have distinction between some words base on some spoken characteristic, as in the example I gave between ancora (still, yet) and ancora (anchor). I just don't know if that characteristic is tone or something else. When I went to school (i.e., a very long time ago) we were never taught that ours was a tonal language. And as it turns out, I know far less about the formalities of my own language than I do about many other languages. :p I guess I'll just have to STFW one of these days. TIP: if anybody is interested it tonal languages and wants to do things like pitch analysis, I can recommend praat (www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat). It's in the Debian repos, but I use Arch so I just build it myself. It helped me quite a bit when I was struggling to get my Ga tones to a point that I could be at least somewhat understood. It may be interesting to see the pitch diagrams of the above mentioned Swedish words.

@@lorenzocabrini You might find this video interesting if you want to learn more about the Swedish pitch accent: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/or6gasKEz83RY2g.html

People dont bother and most Swedes dont even know that they use a pitch accent. Finnish swedish dialect dont use it at all. You can almost always guess the word from the context in the sentence.

bra.👍

Recommend changing "hade jag fått hjälp från" to "fick jag hjälp från", it's subtle but the way you say it now can imply the opposite.

Hej, Dig flytta till Sverige?

@@napziwnlja, jag bo här nu

Du är inte ensam haha

Very true, the pronunciation is the hardest part for me as well!

Unless they come here as a child.

Perhaps self evident, but Swedish pronunciation is much easier if you are musically talented (and/or able to listen carefully). It's about rhythm as much as about melody (prosody). I know English speaking people that achieved pretty realistic Swedish in a couple of years, but also people that never learned it (and are old or dead now).

That applies to every language

In Sweden it is more important how you look than how you sound - so if you want to be accepted try to wear the same kind of clothes as Swedish people at your work place or your school, and cut/arrange your hair as they do. Swedes come in all colors, but show where they belong by dressing alike. If you dress very differently Swedes read it like you don't want to have contact with Swedes. It is silly, but that is how it is. There are always some Swedes that are willing to share your interests and concerns, because there are so many different subgroups in the country, some are prejudiced and narrowminded, some the opposite. Look out for those you like the most! Swedes often connect to strangers (native or not) through what they like to do outside the family and job. Music, football, boating, animals, crafts, gardening, bird watching, hiking, etc. It takes at least a year to learn to know a few Swedes, if they don't have happened to be newly moved into the area themselves. Swedes are mostly occupied with their family and long-time friends, and there might be no vacuum in their lives, on the contrary. Swedes are not so chatty and not much for small-talk, they prefer more permanent relationships with fewer people, but then they don't care so much about pronunciation or grammar mistakes, it is not like Swedes are snobbish in general. But avoid the worst upper-class people, they are hopeless in any country. Do your best for the sake of communication or the demands in your job, for example if you work with people in service, health care, or education.

I was just about to wrte about the ÅÄÖ as well. I find it weird too that they find it so difficult. I believe it's because the think of its written form: A+¨. They read the letter, instead of listenning to its sound. "Är" is pronounced as "Air". "Får" is pronounced as "For", and "För" is pronounced as "Fur". Don't look at its written form, but learn how it's pronounced.

Ö does not sound like "u" in "burn"

@@pierreo33 Well you're right about that, at least when you're talking about American English, since there's barely even a vowel in their pronunciation of burn. Works in British (rp) English though, or if an American tried to sing burn on a long note.

That's not as close as you think. English vowels are odd compared to most other germanic (and indo-european) languages and very distinct. Especially the A, and the shift of E to sound like I in most other languages. Then you have the disinct R. Most native English speakers I known who speak Swedish pronounce är exactly like air, or örn as earn. The different R changes the sound of the vowel quite dramatically. It's approximate, but not really close. The Swedish O is also distinct, while the English O is close to the Swedish U. English good would be spelled gudd in Swedish, for example, with almost exactly the same pronounciation.

@@henrikl.w.4058 Neither of your three examples are close to the Swedish pronounciation. Är is not pronounced Air, Får is not For and För is definitely not Fur. The Swedish vowels have very different quality. The För-Fur is very close in Canadian English though.

wow that’s crazy! but so cool! I was thinking sweden 🇸🇪 itself isn’t that big of a country just like alot of the other surrounding countries like germany 🇩🇪 norwegian, spain 🇪🇸 They probably all have a lot of english speaking language because english is a dominant language and culture that brings in the most money in markets just like china and japan and mexico . You go to those countries and you’re not going to find majority of english speaking people in those countries.

And as a Swede, I think Brazilian Portuguese sounds very sensual. European Portuguese howeversounds like Spanish in Russian 😅

200iq

This advice makes no sense unless you specify which English dialect/accent you have in mind. American? British? Cockney? RP? Scottish? Australian?

@@TheKfauw Like most general statements on pronunciation, I was more going for the American accent. :P It's hard to truly learn it without hearing it though.

@@gee8883 Did you get offended or something? Why even comment like that?

verb stays in the 2nd position

@@nickhall1632 If you translate word by word "då gick jag till doktorn" it will be "then went I to the doctor". This is not easy to learn. It was cold this night=det var kallt i natt. This night it was cold=I natt var det kallt (this night was it cold)

@@lokis7230 V2 word order is a Germanic feature, that only English has lost (=

In German: I went to the doctor = Ich ging zum Doktor Then I went to the doctor = dann ging Ich zum Doktor. So you see that the grammar is the same in germanic languages

The way I learned this was the general rule that most verbs always come in the second position. Verbs are always a priority in the speech.

even the word order in German is a pain in the ass, to me it is more similar to Japanese (grammar?) than to Swedish or English

You can pick any of them Norwegian is basically just an accent of Swedish

@@vicepresidentyoda9274 if you are Swedish I suggest you go ahead and read a book in Norwegian. You will be surprised how different Norwegian actually is. Not saying you will not manage. But you will be surprised. Us Norwegians And Swedes are mutually exposed so much to the spoken versions of our respective languages that we tend to think they are more similar than they actually are.

@@beorlingo Reading in norwegian isn't that difficult i do it all the time on instagram

@@vicepresidentyoda9274 all I'm saying is reading makes you more aware of the differencies. Try reading a book!

Hehehe, from the third party's point of view, Norwegian is like an attemt of Swedes to speak Danish.

Toppen!

I don't think there's much point in learning the grammar, since it's both irregular (pretty much every rule have exceptions) and very simple, it's better to focus on vocabulary and pronancation That said, since your native language is Croatian, you will already be familiar with pitch accent and 30% of the vocabulary

​@@simontollin2004 wdym 30% of the vocab? Croatian is a slavic language we only have borrowed words from English, French, German, Hungarian, turkish and Czech AFAIK and none from Scandinavian languages

What language are yu speaking

Hej! Jag är också från Sverige!

Hi, sorry to bother you. I'm planning to move to Sweden and I want to start studying some Swedish before going there so that I'll have a starting point in learning the language while I'll be there. Would you mind telling me how you learnt Swedish? I mean the resources you used. Thanks 🙏

@@danielestella3144 Hej, most of my learning of Swedish came from 2 Swedish classes I took while still in university, so some of the resources I had like the teacher and other students to interact with or the worksheets/homework assignments aren't really available. However, in terms of books, there were a few that I used at the time. Maybe they might be useful to you as well, but I'm sure there are tons of other great resources out there you can't go wrong with. Nybörjarsvenska (the blue one with a house on the cover) was one of the main books that was used, especially early on. I never had the yellow workbook version, but I assume my teacher pulled stuff from it for us to work in class. Prisma's english - swedish dictionary AND Prisma's swedish - english dictionary (third edition if it matters). Swedish an essential grammar (2nd edition if it matters), I didn't use this one much, but maybe that was just because I was learning grammar through other means in a classroom setting. Nya mål 3, a more intermediate book that was only used later on. I don't really remember much about it, but I think it was mainly used for reading and comprehending short stories. There is a main book and a workbook that exist for it, I have pdf copies of it. Lycka till!

@@totalbrootal Thank you so much! I wish there were Swedish classes in my uni, but unfortunately since not many students are interested in that language here they decided not to teach it. Thank you again for your kind response, I really appreciate it. Have a great day!

Yes! It took me forever to learn how to say turtle “sköldpadda”, shirt “skjorta” and seven “sju”.

@@steveharris1740 Have you been learning swedish on Duolingo, too? xD Because Duo uses these words so often and I hate it because they are so hard to pronounce and i cant remember them

Just a slight correction: "kommer du i eftermiddagen?" is sort of a mix of two different sentences with different meanings. "Kommer du i eftermiddag?" - Are you coming this afternoon? "Kommer du på eftermiddagen?" - Are you coming during the afternoon? Otherwise, spot on.

@@christofferhembo9454 thanks for correcting me! x

Yeah I noticed that too. Especially with the older generations of immigrants. Sometimes it's shocking hearing "25 år jag har bott i Sverige"" and they still have a really rough accent. It really depends on where they are from, like if someone is from Thailand, Syria, Afghanistan etc.. they generally have a harder time with the accent compared to someone coming here from Iceland or the Netherlands. Also when they already come from a Germanic speaking language they'll have to spend less time on grammar and can generally just focus on their pronounciation a lot more. Also a lot of Swedish people are too scared to correct immigrants, because it can be seen as rude. So when the person makes a grammar mistake people don't correct them. So the mistake becomes a habit that just becomes harder and harder to break out of.

I agree. Most native English speakers have a very thick accent (brytning) and can be difficult to understand when they speak Swedish. Also, word order (ordföljd) as well as many other aspects of Swedish grammar can really trip them up. However, there are some English speakers who are able to speak, read, and write very fluently in Swedish (and don't have a thick accent). They are few and far between, but do actually exist (perhaps they're language unicorns?)! Swedes tend to have major problems with subject and verb agreement in English (among other things - including thick Swedish accents and other grammatical and/or pronunciation issues), so they're easy to spot, too. For example, in your comment above: "our English teacher have lived in Sweden for 40 years" is not correct. It should be "has". The word teacher is singular, so it can't be "have" as that's plural. And it isn't "I have never met someone that speak english as a first language". It's "I have never met someone who speaks English as a first language". The subject and verb have to agree in English, so in that sentence it needs to be "speaks", not "speak". Just pointing it out as it goes both ways...hoppas ingen tar illa upp...

SFI = Svenska För Invandrare = Swedish For Immigrants Swedish lessons given (free) to most immigrants.

The intonation/melody is hard for most languages in Swedish. This is probably easy for some south east asians since they have that part (but even harder)

Good and Interest post. The one thing I kinda don't really agree with is the comparison with Skära gurkan (Cut The cucumber) and fina skär (skating nicely) as that's actually the same verb. The Skär when skating is actually from skära (to cut) so it's not really two words sounding the same or ever one word meaning two different thing but one word with two different context.

@@F1rstWorldNomaD One is a noun, the other a verb, but it comes from the same base word, yes. I wanted to show how it changes meaning. In english cut and skating is to different things.

@@andvil01 that's really rather nitpicky as it's only a noun/verb because of the phrasing you used. But I digress. I get your point and what you were trying to say and I don't disagree with that premise. Thanks for clarifying. 😄👍

depends where in south Sweden, I live in the north of Skåne and I dont have R like danish ;)

While in Quebec, I found that some people liked to practice speaking their English with me, meanwhile I was there to learn French

Å and Ö are both rounded vowels, so there you need your lips.

@@valo2872 Men du, på å har man ju läpparna på samma sätt som på o och u. Tungans läge är däremot lite olika. Nåja, kanske finns det flera sätt att producera samma ljud, kanske har vi olika uppfattning om vad som är rikssvenskt uttal.

@@anderslavas6846 jo. Men själva ljudet formas längre bak i munnen. Sen kan man ha hur mycket läppar man vill beroende på dialekt. Men Ä och E blir svåra att skilja åt om man inte är noga med läpparna. Och O blir inte uttydbart om man inte plutar. Det är en fingervisning för dem med annat modersmål så dem vet vilka uttalanden dem ska vara noga med för att det inte ska missuppfattas. T.ex. svenska "el", kan låta som "öl" när vissa med annat modersmål försöer säga det.

WORST OFFENDER:: Swedish name for FInnish city of Turku.. I have never yet mastered that damn thing...

xd

Klasse ich finde ich die Erklärungen. Ich kann etwas schwedisch. Habe noch viel zu lernen. Tack sa mycke!

Not a big deal, for any of Slavs, at least...

You write very well. There's a lot of native speakers that will search for words, too.

Hope you don't go to the english school in Göteborg, snatched a road sign from there hehe

Just keep practicing sjükhus & köttbullar & you'll be fine.

Swedish and dutch are both germatic languages. I have studied dutch and also lived there for a while. I also found a lot of similarities between our languages but we prounance them differently. For example regering, blodtryck, handduk, bestick, gratis and so on. I love the dutch language 😊

I've heard a few dutch exchange students talk Swedish after living here for a year and they talk incredible Swedish. Like perfect, both the grammar and pronounciation. They really sound like they were born here so I've always since then thought that Dutch and Swedish must be kinda close.

@@rexuz2482 Cool! Oh yes, it is. I struggeled with the grammar and pronounce, cus they are very different but the mostly words are the same or similar to swedish and english.

It is my impression that Dutch and Swedish are both close to Plattdeutsch, it's something like a common ancestor for both of them.

Der, Die, Das, Den, Dem, Des. 6 :)

@@Palefish27, you're technically correct, but German still only has three genders: Maskuline, Neutrum, and Feminine. The additional 3 articles are a result of the plural and case systems. Tommie Jönsson is wrong in every way I can think of.

Isnt there 9?

@@K3Vz0, no there are a few duplicates, but even if you count them separately there would be (3+1)*4=16, since there are 3 genders and plural, that can be expressed in 4 cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive).

@@K3Vz0 Now you are just fooling around.

Teach me Swedish language please

@@stpatrickcentre7694 The best way to quickly learn is to watch kids-shows in Swedish with English subtitles. Its simplified language used (especially in shows for toddlers like "Tellietubbies") and in that way you get a base fairly quick.

@@Pastor24u OK I'm asingle teacher here in Kenya.. Kindly connect me there please

@@stpatrickcentre7694 mimi napenda kiswahili. Please contact the Swedish School. There are sever schools called "Swedish School" in both Kenya and Tanzania. They might have books for learning or even staff that are Swedish.

@@Pastor24u unapenda kweli naona

Man, huzbee and someone. Anything/one else?