Learning Swedish

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musicman1982
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Learning Swedish

Postby musicman1982 » 2017-06-02, 11:51

Hello, my name is Matthew, I am English, I live in London and I am interested in learning your language. I have come across a couple of things that I wanted to ask, if anyone is able to answer these questions, it will be appreciated.

1. Does your language have articles in or not, if so what type of articles are used?

2. When it comes to sentence structure with statements, questions, etc. How is grammar used in your language? I have come across a list by Tim Ferris, who has written twelve sentences with different types of grammar structure, I will list them below:



The apple is red

It is john’s apple

I give john the apple

we give him the apple

He give it to john

She gives it to him

is the apple red

The apples are red

I must give it to him

I want to give it to her

I’m going to know tomorrow.

I can’t eat the apple.

I know what I am asking is very specific, but if anyone can answer this question, this will be greatly appreciated. If anyone can, you can say, e.g “Sentence one, will be a statement”, “Sentence six would be a question,” etc.

3. Are there any words in English that are not used in your language?

Again, I know I am asking a lot of these questions. I am not looking for a lot of information. Just something to start off with and work on. I am learning Latvian at the moment, so I am fully aware what the commitment is to learning a language. If you can spare the time, i will gladly take on board anything you say, thank you for your time and patience.

Kind regards,

Matthew.

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Jurgen Wullenwever
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Re: Learning Swedish

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2017-06-04, 10:29

musicman1982 wrote:1. Does your language have articles in or not, if so what type of articles are used?

Swedish has indefinite and indefinite articles, roughly similar to English, but the definite articles are suffixes joined to the word.
musicman1982 wrote:2. When it comes to sentence structure with statements, questions, etc. How is grammar used in your language? I have come across a list by Tim Ferris, who has written twelve sentences with different types of grammar structure, I will list them below:



The apple is red

It is john’s apple

I give john the apple

we give him the apple

He give it to john

She gives it to him

is the apple red

The apples are red

I must give it to him

I want to give it to her

I’m going to know tomorrow.

I can’t eat the apple.

I know what I am asking is very specific, but if anyone can answer this question, this will be greatly appreciated. If anyone can, you can say, e.g “Sentence one, will be a statement”, “Sentence six would be a question,” etc.

Those are English sentences. What do they have to do with Swedish?
musicman1982 wrote:3. Are there any words in English that are not used in your language?

Of course there are, as in all languages. And the other way around. (There must be some other meaning to this question than the one I read.)
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

musicman1982
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Re: Learning Swedish

Postby musicman1982 » 2017-06-04, 15:09

:oops: Hello Jurgen I was referring to sentence structure and I was only using those sentences as an example in how a sentence is made I.e a statement or question, etc.

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dEhiN
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Re: Learning Swedish

Postby dEhiN » 2017-06-05, 5:15

musicman1982 wrote:Hello, my name is Matthew, I am English, I live in London and I am interested in learning your language. I have come across a couple of things that I wanted to ask, if anyone is able to answer these questions, it will be appreciated.
[...]
Again, I know I am asking a lot of these questions. I am not looking for a lot of information. Just something to start off with and work on. I am learning Latvian at the moment, so I am fully aware what the commitment is to learning a language. If you can spare the time, i will gladly take on board anything you say, thank you for your time and patience.

Kind regards,

Matthew.

Hej Matthew och välkommen! I'm not Swedish but I've learned a little bit of Swedish, so perhaps I can help you.

2. When it comes to sentence structure with statements, questions, etc. How is grammar used in your language? I have come across a list by Tim Ferris, who has written twelve sentences with different types of grammar structure, I will list them below:



The apple is red

It is john’s apple

I give john the apple

we give him the apple

He give it to john

She gives it to him

is the apple red

The apples are red

I must give it to him

I want to give it to her

I’m going to know tomorrow.

I can’t eat the apple.

I know what I am asking is very specific, but if anyone can answer this question, this will be greatly appreciated. If anyone can, you can say, e.g “Sentence one, will be a statement”, “Sentence six would be a question,” etc.

This is a pretty broad question Matthew. If you want translations in Swedish for each of these 12 sentences, then it's best to ask for that directly. Swedish is a Germanic language and, as such, is fairly closely related to English. Therefore in general (if not all the time?) a sentence that is a statement - also known as an indicative sentence - will be that way in both languages. The same is true of question sentences - also known as interrogative sentences. If you want to know generally how Swedish grammar works, I guess you could try googling. I know there is also a resource called "Essential Swedish Grammar" which could be helpful. Wikipedia's language articles tend to have good overviews of the language's grammar. As well, the various native speakers on this subforum can help you. But you might need to ask specific grammar questions.

Some things I can tell you: (Standard) Swedish has two genders for nouns - the common gender and the neuter gender. As a result adjectives are declined depending on the gender and number. As Jurgen said, Swedish definite articles are attached to the end of the word as a suffix. There are different rules for how they are attached. So to give you some examples, en is the indefinite article for common gender nouns and ett for neuter gender. The word "boy" in Swedish is pojke and it is a common gender noun. So "a boy" would be en pojke but "the boy" would be pojken. The word "apple" in Swedish is äpple and is a neuter gender noun. So "an apple" would be ett äpple while "the apple" would be äpplet. The same happens with plural nouns - the definite article is attached as a suffix. Swedish verbs don't conjugate for person, only for tense. So att dansa means "to dance" but dansar is the present tense indicative form of that. That is, dansar means "dance/dances" in English and would be used in the present tense with all the pronouns.

I can't think of anything else to add; that's a basic overview of Swedish nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

3. Are there any words in English that are not used in your language?

As Jurgen said, there are plenty. This question is also a pretty broad question and difficult to answer. Perhaps you could argue that in general, all the words in English that were taken from French probably aren't in Swedish, though I know Swedish does have words that are of French origin.
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

musicman1982
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Re: Learning Swedish

Postby musicman1982 » 2017-06-05, 12:07

Tack dEhiN,

The reason why I asked these questions, is because of these following things.

1. I want to understand the sentence structure of statements, questions, etc. I don't want to know of how each of these sentence that I had written on the website. Just general structure e.g subject, verb and object or do they swap round? With the Swedish language itself, is it similar to the English structure or are there some differences?

2. I am dyslexic and grammar has always been my challenge, I have enough trouble with my English, let alone understanding another language; As I mentioned in my previous message, I am studying Latvian, because my dad is originally from there and from what I have heard my relatives in Latvia have learnt Swedish, because in my dad's family their language of Latvian is taken from the Swedish dialect, so I thought it made sense. I hope this makes sense?

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Jurgen Wullenwever
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Re: Learning Swedish

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2017-06-06, 2:54

musicman1982 wrote:1. I want to understand the sentence structure of statements, questions, etc. I don't want to know of how each of these sentence that I had written on the website. Just general structure e.g subject, verb and object or do they swap round? With the Swedish language itself, is it similar to the English structure or are there some differences?

It is similar to the English sentence structure, but we do not have the do/did-constructions.

The apple is red
Äpplet är rött.

It is john’s apple
Det är Johans äpple.

I give john the apple
Jag ger Johan äpplet.

we give him the apple
Vi ger honom äpplet.

He give[s] it to john
Han ger det till Johan.

She gives it to him
Hon ger det till honom.

is the apple red
Är äpplet rött?

The apples are red
Äpplena är röda.

I must give it to him
Jag måste ge det till honom./Jag måste ge honom det.

I want to give it to her
Jag vill ge det till henne./Jag vill ge henne det.

I’m going to know tomorrow.
Jag kommer att veta imorgon.

I can’t eat the apple.
Jag kan inte äta äpplet.
musicman1982 wrote:I am studying Latvian, because my dad is originally from there and from what I have heard my relatives in Latvia have learnt Swedish, because in my dad's family their language of Latvian is taken from the Swedish dialect, so I thought it made sense. I hope this makes sense?

Latvian and Swedish are very distantly related, so there is no similarity between them.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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dEhiN
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Contact:

Re: Learning Swedish

Postby dEhiN » 2017-06-06, 5:24

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:
musicman1982 wrote:I am studying Latvian, because my dad is originally from there and from what I have heard my relatives in Latvia have learnt Swedish, because in my dad's family their language of Latvian is taken from the Swedish dialect, so I thought it made sense. I hope this makes sense?

Latvian and Swedish are very distantly related, so there is no similarity between them.

Yeah as Jurgen said Swedish and Latvian come from two completely different branches of the big Indo-European language family. Specifically, Swedish comes from the Germanic family, and Latvian from the Baltic family. So I'm not sure what you mean by "in my dad's family their language of Latvian is taken from the Swedish dialect". Perhaps your dad's family speaks a dialect of Swedish that has had major Latvian influence? Or the other way around - a Latvian dialect that has had Swedish influence? In linguistics there's a concept called substrate and superstrate. Basically this refers to, when two languages influence each other, which language is the influencer and which one is "influencee".
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Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)


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