American living in Sweden here: I think the fact that Swedes respond with their year of birth rather than age stems from the school system. Knowing someone’s age is most relevant in grade school, because it guides when kids should start school and provides a reference for relating one stage of development to another. In Sweden, grade levels are based upon what year you’re born in rather than an age cutoff before the beginning of the school year in August/September. So everyone born in 1994 will all start first grade in 2000, regardless of whether they were 6 years old before the beginning of the school year. Since year of birth and grade level are pegged together in this system, when you’re in grade school and someone asks you how old you are, the more relevant response indicates what grade you’re in rather than your actual age. This way of responding to the question “how old are you” then becomes default and is carried into adulthood.

I think Evan is a bit picky! Maybe homesick😁 In Spain a Tortilla is an omelette and since we are in Europe it make sense to distinguish a bred from an omelette! The Swedish computer keyboard only has one key with one set of exclamation signs on it (shift+2) => " . There is but one option to write exclamations! Concerning age, when you are young it is important to be old and you do not want to be confused with someone of the same age that are borne the year after you😎 Keep up the good work!

You can say something like ”I'm back Wednesday week 30”, people say that, it's not a problem. At work places everything is week related. You start working the first day of the week, which is Monday in Sweden, and you work until Friday and take two days off, so it's very natural to talk about weeks. Also, kids have ”sportlov” and ”påsklov” certain week numbers, and those are different in different parts of Sweden, so not too many people try to ski at the same place all at once. Weeks are very usable, but when not talking about work or school, I think very few Swedes talk about week numbers.

It´s not annoying, just different. You nailed it.

I don't know what it is, but Swedes love to hear what others think of us. Me included haha.

The boyfriend in the small screen is incredibly inane.

to be honest I stoped watching them simply because 99% of the time it's just him whining like a picky 5-year-old.

When people ask our age in Sweden, I think we tell what year we were born so that you can calculate things like which when you started school, college and stuff. Age changes sometime during the year, so by telling when you were born, you can skip the follow up question if you went to the same grade at the same time. Milestones in life becomes more apparent depending on what year you were born.

we love this reaction video! So glad that Adri agreed with me about the "how old are you?" question.

Week numbers are relevant for schoolholidays. In Denmark winter break is week 8 and autum is week 42. This way you know the dates of your autumholidays the rest of your school life! But people working in the care industy take it to an other level because they work every 2nd week. If you ask: Can you come to a party Nov. 5th, they'll ask: "Is it in an even week?" or "Is it an odd week?" When my sister was still working (nursing home), we could never had family gatherings in "odd" weeks🤣 Peace and love 🙂

Me and Evan use to be colleagues and we would discuss his videos frequently 😅 Two of my explanations. When Swedes are young we are always divided depending on the year we are born. Or in sports it would always be the class of "89 and 90's in this competition" for example. The year we are born are used instead of saying our age. So even when we are older we are aware of how old someone is just by knowing their year of birth. But like one of you said, if we know that the age difference is too big we would just say our age. But if I would study at university for example and I would meet all my upcoming classmates on the first day I would say (directly translated) "I'm a 92". That's just how we learnt it. I understand for people that's not use to think like that it's like talking kilometers when they only know miles. Second thing, weeks. The industrial vacation is always week 28 - 31 if I'm not wrong. This means all factories (back in the day) would be closed down during these weeks. Which meant like 50% of all Swedes would have vacation these specific 4 weeks. Cause Sweden was very much factory based like 40 years ago. This is the same as with what year you are born. All Swedes know when these 4 weeks take place. If you were to ask me what month week 45 is I would have 0 clue. Week 28 is about middle of July and 31 is beginning of August. And these four weeks are like the highlight of the Swedish summer since July is the warmest month. It's THE month Swedes kinda long for all year. Think of it as Christmas almost. for a country with warmer climate, July isn't that special. But for us it is.

I tell people my birth year mostly because i have no idea how old i am, it chagnes every year i cant remember that, They can figure this shot out

Fun video on a video. I think the whole thing about knowing weeks is kinda parental. Parents usually know, because their school-age kids school year and holidays are usually expressed in weeks, usually rather than months as school doesn't run from the first of September to the last of June. Usually, school starts some day during week 33 or 34, i.e mid-august,, fall vacation is week 44, also known as the last days of october/first days of november. Christmas/winter holiday is normally week 52-1, spring/sports vacation is weeks 8, 9 or 10 depending on where in Sweden you live and summer vacation usually is week 23 or 24, or mid-june, until school starts again. Easter is the only one that moves around too much to pin a week too.

Ok, so I'm here again haha. The confusion around the age versus year of birth is interesting. I feel like here in Sweden, more so than other countries, groups of ages are tied more together. Someone born 91/92/93/94 likely share the same childhood experience (like shows, toys, games, memberships of websites/communities, what society looked like etc). Whereas someone born later might have more in common with those who are younger vice versa.

I just wanted to give you a tip, if you haven't then check out Jonna Jinton. She lives in the northwest of Sweden, pretty far up north. Even if you live in sweden it's amazing to watch her videos. I actually live a little bit further up north than she does but in a city by the coast so for me the landscape and way she lives is so far from the way I live, the only thing that's the same is the weather/temperature and light conditions. She makes amazing videos, sings, paints, vlogs, photography etc. She does these recordings of sounds of the ice in the winter and also have made her own version of the swedish national anthem that you should check out (A SONG FOR SWEDEN - DU GAMLA DU FRIA). I don't know if it's something you wan't to react to but I think you will enjoy checking it out. She speaks english in her vids but other than that everything is very swedish.

I like your content, keep it coming👌

I've lived in Denmark for over a decade and still never know what week it is.

I always use weeks. It's so much easier to keep track of, especially when you're at work. Also, you don't have to keep track of dates and all swedish calendars comes with the weeks clearly marked.

You can get vacation on parts of a week, no problem. But that is very uncommon because people in my parts of sweden really like to connect weekends and holidays. For instance, taking a full week plus monday, tuesday and wednesday the following week is very rare. Because we do not like to come in to work for just 2 days and then be free come saturday again. If I draw a parallell, imagine sleeping for 5 hours, wake up and work for 1 hour then go back to sleep for 3 hours. Same thing if we have a national holiday on a tuesday or a thursday. Then we will often extend the weekend by taking a vacation day for the monday or friday respectively. The day in between is known as a "klämm dag". Literal translation a "clamped day", basically means the "day in between"(two holidays).

Swedes also have more weekend of from Schools, like sportlov, påsklov and stuff so we learn to cope with weeks a lote more. Midsummer is alway at friday at week 25 so you learn to count what week you`ll have your vacation

That American dude, dissing her for thinking pepper is too spicy, AMERICANS, SPICY DOES NOT MEAN HOT! SPECIALLY NOT IN SWEDISH... Kryddig(a lot of spices aka SPICY) vs het/stark(the thing measured in Scoville Heat Units, AKA how much Capsaicin is in the food) are not the same thing... If I poured a ton of Salt in your food, everyone would say it's too salty, if I poured a ton of Black or White Pepper in your food, you wouldn't go, oh this here tastes delicious, you would spit that shit out and say it's too spicy. Bloody Americans, there's something awfully wrong with how you perceive the world.

The counting to three on the fingers come from germany, its common from old germanic nations and nations close to germany to count the "swedish way" in the video

If you're doing shift-work you could for example be on the late-shift on even numbered weeks, and the early shift on odd weeks, or vice versa. But it's as you say, mostly a work-related habit, and definitely not as prominent as it once were.

When everyone has I think 4 weeks of vacation always ut is easier to say weeks since it will likely be from week x to week x. That's something that has developed through vacation I feel

We always starts with the first finger when we count numbers when we want to show..it is logical :)

Fun thing about counting on your fingers in Sweden. IF you're counting with your palm away from you you begin counting with your thumb, however one item is still represented with your index finger. If you're counting with your palm towards you, you count like the Americans, index, long finger, ring finger, pinkie, thumb. In Swedish Sign Language, you count like normal finger counting like Americans, and then 6 is just the thumb, seven is index plus thumb, eight is long finger plus index plus thumb, nine is a closed fist, and ten is Call me, literally it's pinkie and thumb... So you could say there are 3 ways to count on your fingers in Sweden, I personally count the sign language way, because I have a deaf colleague, and I'm used to it now, if not I count in a very specific manner which allows me to count really really high on my hands which basically allows me to count to 4095 on one hand. Those who studies math, may notice that, that number is 2^12 -1 so yes I literally count in binary on my right hand.

The decimal comma or the decimal point took me a very long time to learn. Now when I see a decimal point I think, oh that person come from an English speaking country

About the tacobröd. I think we swedes see tacos as a meal, and not a dish. If that makes any sense. And for the meal tacos we have bread, tacobröd. And I did not use weeks until my kid started school. Now everything is weeks...

Realize the pettiness when your significant other's quotation marks irritates you.

Americans are so excited about everything😂

Tbf swedish tortilla is not authentic so taco bread makes more sense xD Afaik tortilla are made with corn flour? And our "taco bread" is made with wheat flour I have no idea how to even write " as nines on the keyboard xD

Let me explain the age and year-u-were-born-thing. 😅 So I'm born 98 so I COULD BE 23, BUT I was born in august so I'm technically not 23 yet, I'm 22. So if I meet someone that says they are 22, I wanna know: are we the same age? Did we graduate high school about the same time? And so if they had said "I'm 22, I'm a 99" then I know that even tho we both are 22 I'm actually older and so we didn't graduate high school the same year (probably) and so on. It's very simple :p It's also nice to compare ages like my brothers are born 93 and 95. And so if someone says they're a 94 I know they're about the same age as my brothers :) It's also easier to count back as Evan suggests, that way I won't forget my brothers ages, or my own 😂 And like Nicho says I won't use the year I was born if an older person or a kid were to ask me my age but it's helpful if you are close in age. This is mostly used by younger people born in and around 1990 and forward, my mom would never respond with saying that she's born 68 if someone asked her age. It might sound weird but yea it works and it's helpful to actually know someones age :p

About answering the born culture is that we compare eachother back in the days.So I'm 74 and that year sucked and 75 was bad but 76 and 77 was god.Still we know when some stars were born like Peter Forsberg a really famous hockeyplayer.He was, I think 74 .So we could say that someone from that year was actually good.Reason number 2 is you just had a birthday or you are going to have a birthday is a year diffrense.So the person doesent say I'm 20 but 21 next month they say I'm born in 2000.

All swedish people I know answer their age and not the year. And yes it's called a tortilla.

Man, that guy gets really, really annoyed at the smallest things. He actually sounded kind of pissed off about it. He also seems to think that his way is the only right way? It's all in good fun though. Just some cultural differences, that's all. ^^ As a side note, I get really confused about the whole weeks thing. I don't like it, while some people seem to love them and want to book by the week number. So on that one I actually agree with him. :P

Is he Swedish?

Our lives do not revolve around what month it is. Everyone who has a stable job live according to the weekly cycle. That is why organizing your time using week number makes much more sense than using months that has nothing to do with the actual work week your life revolves around. Also, There is only one kind of " on a Swedish keyboard, so that is obviously the proper way. - English has it wrong.

I really like this idea you have here. Gives you a two for one experience. :) But there are some interresting things going on here I would like to comment on. Right in the beginning Evan says that his girlfriend does 6 annoying things. And then he shows the number on his hands, using his thumb to show the last digit. The same thing he says he is annoyed that she does. Ok... And tortilla looks very much like Swedish tunnbröd, "thinbread", so it's not strange at all that we see it as bread even if it isn't. Which I have no idea if it is or not... It looks like bread and it's used as bread. So why not call it bread? And the quotation marks. Having different on each side would make it really difficult to make air quotes. You would have to turn one hand upside down. :P

Tortillas are fried bread, though 😅 It's Flatbread 😅 wtf guys Edit: also, that age thing must be some Stockholm bs, because I haven't seen it outside reaction videos

I'm from Sweden and I hate people who use weeks and birthyear. Sure birthyear is fine when talking about a car, also I do not count with my thumb first if I'm going to show my fingers. If I'm counting to myself, I do though. Using the 66 or 99 quotations is just fancy, like drawing circles instead of dots for "i!ÄÖ"

I hate that swedes say week instead of date. Weeke 24-27 tells me litteraly nothing and I'm born and raised in sweden

A little question, how did you two end up in Sweden?

Everywhere in Europe you start to count 1 with the tam and NOT and NEVER THTE WITH THE POITING FINGERS. IT JUST DO NOT MAKE SENS TO START IN THE MIDDLE AND GO BACK IN THE COUNT. TUMS UP FOR THE TUM COUNT ! - and in the Uk they do it. they show always there tum up it they like something. Now I find that annoying and stupid and cheap but the COUNTS START WITH A TUM and NOT WITH THE MID FINGER...!

fy fan

I don't agree with his arguement on the bread. You call ''Naan'' bread for example. Tortilla is actually a spanish dish. Then you would call it a tortilla-bread if it was just the bread.