r/Svenska May 29 '25

Discussion Updated rules – please read before posting

16 Upvotes

Välkommen till r/Svenska!

tl;dr:
• Read the FAQ first
• Keep posts related to the Swedish language or language-learning – we now have flairs!
• Use r/swedish or r/spop etc. to request movie or music tips
• Don't report posts/comments that do not actually break the rules

We're a subreddit where learners and speakers of Swedish can discuss, ask and answer questions about the language, as well as studies and research relating to it. Whether you are learning Swedish as a foreign language, a native speaker curious about a dialectal word or grammatical quirk, or a lingusitics student with a survey for your thesis, you're welcome here!

Further below are our rules, but before that, here are some links we hope you'll enjoy:

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Locally-sourced expertise has been used to answer some of the more common questions we see on this subreddit, so maybe you can find an answer to yours here. If not, try using the search function to see if your question has been answered before. But don't let this discourage your from posting; if an old answer is unclear or doesn't help you with your problem, feel free to post a thread – if you mention that you already checked the FAQ, that helps us help you.

Do you think a certain question is common enough that it should be in the FAQ? Tell us!

List of resources

A long list of resources that can help you learn the language, or learn more about it! Here, you will find dictionaries, podcasts, Youtube channels, online communities and a lot of other resources, for beginners and advanced learners alike. If you know a resource that deserves to be on the list but isn't, tell us!

The most important resources is probably svenska.se, where you can look up the spelling, inflection, meaning, pronunciation and history of most Swedish words. You can also hear pronunciations, often more natural/less enunciated, at youglish.com/swedish and forvo.com/languages/sv

Discord server

Feel free to join us on Discord! Practice reading, writing, speaking and listening, ask your questions and just hang out.

The rules

  1. Be respectful of your fellow redditors. Flaming, trolling, hate, personal attacks or bad-faith arguments are not allowed. Of course, all of Reddit's other rules apply here, too.
  2. Post contents must be on-topic. This is a language subreddit, and all posts should be about the Swedish language or language-learning in general. Posting a video that is in the Swedish language is not the same as a video about the Swedish language. On-topic memes are fine in moderation, and you're allowed to advertise your Swedish-learning product, channel etc. once or twice. Always flair your post accordingly! We no longer allow requests for non-language related media suggestions.
  3. Questions and tips are always welcome. Feel free to ask your questions about the language or culture, ask for learning tips or contribute your own tips or links to websites helpful for learning. However, we no longer permit requests for movies or music etc. Links to language-learning communities are only permitted as comments, if explicitly requested by another poster.
  4. Ask permission to post community links. To prevent a flood of community links, we ask you to contact us via modmail before you post links to Whatsapp groups, Discord servers etc. We permit Swedish-oriented communities that we deem could be helpful to our members – a newly started Facebook group with three members will not be permitted. However, users may ask for tips on niche communities, and if you know of a community that fits such a request, you can always link that in a comment.
  5. No chat requests outside the megathread. As stated above, we want to prevent a flood of posts that are less useful to the average member. For this reason, please don't make post asking to find study buddies or chat groups outside of the dedicated megathread. You're also very welcome to join our official Discord community for free, real-time feedback about all things Swedish. Please join us!
  6. We won't do your work for you. While we are happy to point you in the right direction, answer your questions along the way or check your grammar when you're done, we will not actually do your homework for you. This is a place for learning, not cheating. This goes doubly for professional tasks: most of our users are not trained translators, copywriters or language consultants. Feel free to ask linguistic questions, but don't crowdsource practical, qualified work. Contact a professional instead; that guarantees better results for you as well!
  7. No exchanging/requesting copyrighted material. We do not condone sharing PDFs of paid textbooks or entertainment media.

Reporting etiquette

We're a small mod team and always appreciate it when members take the time to report misconduct and rule violations – especially of comments. But please make sure that a post actually violates the rules before you report it. For example, the rules do not actually prohibit questions that are already answered in the FAQ, or answers that are incorrect.

Reporting poor-quality-but-technically-allowed content only leads to us having to approve the post/comment, which gives it a green seal of approval and makes it look like we like it more than we actually do. Please just downvote these instead!

Suggestions

Feel free to post your feedback on the rules and guidelines in this thread. We also welcome suggestions for FAQ entries, resources and new flairs.


r/Svenska Sep 01 '21

Penpals megathread!

143 Upvotes

Learning a new language is easier with the support of friends, be it other learners going through the same journey, native speakers to lead you along the way, or even less experienced learners that you can help out to help both of you understand things better. If you're looking for pen pals, gaming buddies, book clubs or just friends so you can practice the language – through immersion or studies alike – feel free to post a comment in this thread and tell us a bit about yourself, or reply to commenters you would like to get in touch with.

Suggested post format – add or remove headers as you like

Name or handle: (whatever you want to be called)

Swedish level: (your approximate proficiency, expressed e.g. in A1 to C2, beginner to fluent or how long you've been learning/studying)

Language: (your native language and other languages you know or are learning)

Looking for: (Duolingo pals? Native helpers? Steam friends? People in your area? Someone who wants to discuss Swedish music?)

Presentation: (A more free-form introduction of yourself as a person!)

We recommend you do not include private contact information in your post; if you find somebody you want to keep in touch with, contact them through Reddit's direct messaging instead.

Please note that this thread is only intended for finding people for the purpose of learning Swedish or helping learners. Irrelevant posts may be deleted. Likewise, asking for pen pals outside of this thread is not permitted, and any such threads will be removed and redirected here.

As always, you are also very welcome to look for chat mates in our Discord server.


r/Svenska 12h ago

Meme I told my Swedish coworkers "jag är slut" and my English brain has not recovered

522 Upvotes

Day three at a Swedish office. I want to say I'm exhausted. I confidently announce to the entire lunch table: "jag är helt slut."

Everyone nods sympathetically. Nobody reacts. Meanwhile the English half of my brain is standing on a chair screaming.

Ten minutes later I get in the elevator and the display says FART KONTROLL. I had to hold onto the wall.

Later that week I bought a "slutpris" item at ICA and genuinely considered framing the receipt.

Sweden, you have my full respect and none of my composure.

What's the worst word Swedish has done to you?


r/Svenska 2h ago

Language question (see FAQ first) Myrslåtter - what is it?

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slu.se
2 Upvotes

https://www.slu.se/artdatabanken/publikationer/rapporter/myrslatter-i-norra-sverige--forutsattningar-for-framtida-skotsel/

I have been trying to read this webpage ”Myrslåtter i norra Sverige – förutsättningar för framtida skötsel”, but am stuck on the very first word — what precisely is ”myrslåtter”? Grateful if someone can help.  (Am reading Ulrike Lagerlöf’s Hjortron myren, which is what led me here.)


r/Svenska 12h ago

Studying and education Någon som tog/tar fristående kurser efter SVA 3?

2 Upvotes

Hej!

Jag har nyss avslutat mina svenska studier och har blivit antagen till några fristående kurser på universitetet. Som det står nu ska jag delta i fyra kurser: den akademiska skrivprocessen, retorik: att skriva, svenska för studier och yrkesliv och introduktion till akademiskt skrivande. Ni kan kanske se av mina studieval att jag vill (behöver) utveckla min skrivförmåga mest av allt. Ironiskt nog är min kandidatexamen inriktad mot engelskt skrivande, men feedbacken på mina svenska uppsatser var, kort sagt, inte helt positiv under kurserna.

Trots att jag är lite närmare till mitt mål är jag fortfarande lite osäker på mina svenskförmågor och vill därför höra (läsa) om det finns några av er som har lyckats med fristående kurser efter SVA 3 eller universitetet över huvud taget. Tack på förhand!


r/Svenska 21h ago

Meme Hot take: the sj-sound is overrated and you're stressing way too much about it

5 Upvotes

r/Svenska 1d ago

Language question (see FAQ first) Started Swedish a few days ago, goal is C1 in 5 years, what should I use instead of Duolingo?

10 Upvotes

Hej everyone,

Started Swedish a few days ago, goal is C1 in 5 years for uni stuff. Right now my setup is just Duolingo (the max version, I get it free through a family plan, that's the only reason I was using it) + Clozemaster. Been lurking other subreddits and it's pretty obvious Duolingo alone isn't gonna get me anywhere near real fluency.

Bit of context on me: native Romanian speaker, B2 to almost C1 in English. From doing Duolingo so far the Swedish vocab and grammar have felt surprisingly easy and intuitive, guessing the Romance/Germanic overlap plus my English is doing some heavy lifting there. Pronunciation is a whole different story though, I'm struggling hard with that part specifically.

One thing though, moving to Sweden or doing an exchange just isn't in the cards for me right now. Maybe a short vacation at someee point but that's kinda it, so pretty much everything has to happen from self-study at home.

I'm starting from zero and don't wanna build bad habits early that I have to unlearn later, so trying to sort my approach out now while it's easy to change.

If any of y'all have any recommendations for what to actually use instead of (or alongside) Duolingo, how well it worked for you, and what a realistic self-study path to C1 actually looks like, I'm all ears. Books, apps, decks, routines, whatever worked for you, especially anything that'll help with pronunciation since that's my weak spot right now.

Tack!


r/Svenska 1d ago

Text and translation help duolingo bug?

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6 Upvotes

This is correct, right?


r/Svenska 21h ago

Studying and education Best Resource to prepare for Swedish Citizenship Test 'Social'

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0 Upvotes

r/Svenska 22h ago

Resource request/tip Hej, just a question (I Guess this Flair Works)

0 Upvotes

Hej, I'm from the UK and I do want to move to Sweden at some point (Preferably in like the next 3-5 years, to study, and I want to move away from the UK for political and education reasons mainly) and am learning Swedish so I know the language when I do move

My issue is, I'm using Duolingo, which, to my understanding, uses ai, which makes you lose the human connection, and I've found that there is a high likelihood of some grammar mistakes potentially, I understand some of the basic words, which to my understanding Duolingo does okay, but I'd like to move away from it so I can actually get to mostly full fluency when I go.

Is there any other app I can use to continue learning Swedish? I am a bit into Swedish on Duo (Section 2 Unit 8) but not too far from the start, so It probably won't take long to get back up to where I was just by running through the basic words and phrases, and sentences (Which I Need to Go over anyway).

When I have the money available to do so, I will invest in a English/Swedish dictionary, so I will have that going for me, but I don't know how some words will connect or if some words mutate or whatever.

If someone could help that would be massively appreciated

Tack :)


r/Svenska 1d ago

Studying and education is Zero to Hero a good deck?

1 Upvotes

basically i have a normal 625 word deck but thats gonna run out really quickly so im trying to do another deck alongside it (i have plenty of time so that's not an issue). is zero to hero, specifically pts 1 and 2, good? ill link it here:

part 1: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1658586181

part 2: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1992299061

thxx :)


r/Svenska 1d ago

Language question (see FAQ first) Reflexive possessive pronouns

1 Upvotes

Hello,

I have a basic question about the possessive pronoun in this example sentence: 'the ducks are following their mother'.

My limited understanding of Swedish reflexive possessive pronouns suggests that this would be translated as 'ankorna följer sina mor', because 'their' refers to several duckings.

However the example I am looking at translates the sentence as 'ankorna följer sin mor', and Google Translate (I know, not always the greatest) agrees with this.

Is the example translation correct, and if so could someone please help me understand why? Perhaps it is because 'the ducklings' is considered to be a mass noun and therefore singular?

Thanks!

Edit: thanks for the replies, it was a simple misunderstanding on my part! All clear now.


r/Svenska 2d ago

Language question (see FAQ first) "Att ligga på sofflocket"

11 Upvotes

Have just come across the expression “ligga på sofflocket”, and I can’t help wondering how it came about, as on the face of it, this seems like a very uncomfortable place to lie.


r/Svenska 2d ago

Language question (see FAQ first) 10 year old immigration Swedish language acquisition

23 Upvotes

We have moved/immigrated (hopefully permanently) from the USA to Sweden almost 7 months ago and our three children are in Swedish public schools. Our home language is English but I try to speak some Swedish (which I am also currently learning) at home as much as I can. Dad is a monolingual English speaker.

Our oldest is 10 years old, thriving socially here, but speaking very little Swedish. Kids at school and in the neighborhood love to speak English with him, and he gladly sticks with it for the familiarity, understandably. Obviously, I am an adult and will politely ask that Swedes stick to Swedish with me, and they so kindly and often encouragingly do! That said, my 10 year old does not insist on that. :-)

The public school support for immigrant children learning Swedish is essentially "they will pick it up eventually." That said, he had an incredible teacher this year that used to work for Swedish language integration education for children prior to that program being cut :-/ so she was able to devote a little extra language time to him. He will not have that same teacher next year unfortunately.

This is what we are currently doing to address it. Please give me kind and gentle feedback. :-)

- He gets a 30 minute online Swedish tutor once a week.

- We have him listen to Swedish podcasts on topics he is interested in most days.

- He has to read in Swedish at least 30 minutes a day on a school app called Polylino, which often has audio and sometimes a word/sentence highlighter for following along.

- He gets screen time in Swedish (although we tend to be fairly low-screen in our home).

(edited to add) - I have asked his fritidsledare and other native Swedish adults in his life to speak Swedish only to him and prompt/expect/encourage him to reply in Swedish.

It seems like this is a lot of input and his comprehension appears decent, but it doesn't really force him much with production. When we do ask him for how to say such-and-such thing, he actually does it fairly well! But he won't take the iniative independently.

Of note: In the U.S., my he and my middle child went to a half-assed Spanish bilingual public school where the administration really did not prioritize Spanish (I'm not resentful at all -- haha!!), and even there my oldest was resistant to learning Spanish despite his exposure to it since toddlerhood.

***Cross posting to a multilingual parenting subreddit.


r/Svenska 2d ago

Resource request/tip SVT Play - Sverige Bara

4 Upvotes

Something changed and we can only watch Nyheter på lätt Svenska if we are in Sweden 😭😭

I hope they didn't get rid of my Pippi Långstrump.

I don't know what to do now. 😅


r/Svenska 3d ago

Meme Unpopular opinion

48 Upvotes

Swedish isn't hard. The grammar is easy. It's just those SEVENTEEN vowel sounds trying to end you. Agree or disagree? 🔥


r/Svenska 2d ago

Resource request/tip Need help with phonetics

1 Upvotes

Hi, I'm starting a Swedish course next September in uni and I have started learning a bit of Swedish on my own. And while I (for now) find it fairly easy, the pronunciation is absolutely killing me, the guy in videos I'm watching doesn't show the words spelled with the phonetical alphabet so I'm just stuck trying to pronounce the words the same way as him.

Does anyone know of a website where I can search the words and see their phonetical spellings ?


r/Svenska 3d ago

Resource request/tip Guidence to a beginner learner

6 Upvotes

Beginner Guide

Hey guys i want to ask non Swedish people who learnt Swedish by themselves, from your own experience ,which book do you recommend the best for a beginner who knows ABSOLUTE NOTHING in Swedish and want to start from ZERO I did a bit of research but i ended up being stuck with these choices (Rivstart A1+A2, Colloquial Swedish by <Jennie Ahlgren, Philip Holmes and Gunilla Serin>, Basic Swedish A Grammar and Workbook by <Ian Hinchliffe and Phillip Holmes>, Complete Swedish by Anneli Haake) please recommend me the best.

thank you for your time


r/Svenska 4d ago

Meme swedish anyone?

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104 Upvotes

Three years later and I still don't know the difference...


r/Svenska 4d ago

Text and translation help What do these words mean on this 17th century Swedish map of Åland?

10 Upvotes

(I hope this is an appropriate subreddit for this question, pointers to other subreddits are also welcome!)

On the Wikipedia page for Åland, I found this old map, made some time before 1667 by Hans Hansson.

For best resolution see the original from Kungliga biblioteket: https://libris.kb.se/g0s1rzds1h3r26l

The map is very interesting, and as someone who's only learning Swedish I am pleasantly surprised about how much I was able to understand! One phrase, though, seems completely alien to me, and it's this:

"*Stips och *stütüleden emillan Suerige och finlandh" = "...leden mellan Sverige och Finland" in modern Swedish, with unknown words marked as *.

The same phrase, with the two words appears multiple times here, indicating ship/ferry routes:

*Stips och *stütüleden emillan Tÿskland och Åbo = ??? mellan Tyskland och Åbo (image rotated 90 degrees)
*Stips och *stütüleden igenom finland till Rÿſsland = ??? igenom Finland till Ryssland

And it also appears in the legend of the map:

*Stips och *stütüleder

I have googled what could be the meanings of these words pretty extensively and out of desperation even asked AI, but all to no avail. I am not even sure if the second letter is "t" in those words, since on some you can faintly see a small stroke to the right side of the t. Another hypothesis was that it's actually "k", similar to the shape in Tÿskland, and that would explain *skips (~skepps) better but the second word *skütü still remains elusive. Unfortunately svenska.se seems to be down so I was unable to check it on SAOB.

If someone could give pointers on this (quite niche) question and help me understand what that phrase could be that would be very helpful! Thanks in advance :D


r/Svenska 4d ago

Language question (see FAQ first) "Fil" betydelse

0 Upvotes

Jag kan komma på fyra olika betydelser för ordet "Fil". Hur blev det så, varför valde man inte ett annat ord för engelskans "File" när "Fil" redan hade 3 betydelser?


r/Svenska 6d ago

Language question (see FAQ first) Ännu en dialektfråga

7 Upvotes

Hejsan!

Jag lyssnar på många svenska poddar just nu för att jag vill träna lite min hörförståelse. Jag blir ganska nyfiken om dialekter medan jag lyssnar, och lade in (uploaded/posted?) en fråga för några dagar sedan med en fråga om det.

Jag har en fråga till nu - jag lyssnar på podden ”bokbikten” och (jag tror att) de två talare har märkbart olika dialekter. Jag undrar om någon har tid för att lyssna på en minut av podden och hjälpa mig identifiera vilka dialekter de har. Bara för att jag tycker de olika svenska dialekter är jättekul.

Kan linka Spotify här: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KXPK9ePKFWr673MST8aQD?si=pAVj5ALySt-PUepJ5vfomA&utm_source=copy-link

Tack I förväg för hjälpen!


r/Svenska 5d ago

Text and translation help Konstnasandet?

1 Upvotes

Can anyone help me figure out what this word means, in particular the ending -nasendet? ChatGPT is perplexed and says it’s not a word, but this word is used several times in one of the Kurt Wallander books so I don’t think it’s a typo.

Here’s one of the examples:
“Vem är han?” ”En man som lyfte upp konstnasandet till en högre nivå.” I wonder if it has something to do with art theft or forgery or fraud maybe?

Thanks!


r/Svenska 6d ago

Studying and education Behöver man kunna komma ihåg alla ordklasser för få betyg i svenska på grundläggande nivå?

1 Upvotes

Hej Reddit. 

På grund av olika anledningar så gjorde jag aldrig svenskan på grundläggande nivå och försöker nu jobba upp den, jag hade tydligen tillräcklig uppfattning att hamna på svenska delkurs 3 och får nu en massa ordklasser som jag har svårt att förstå mig på, mitt minne är skit så jag glömmer lätt saker lite hela tiden. 

Min fråga: Kan man få lägsta möjliga betyg utan att kunna alla ordklasser och regler utantill? 

 

Just nu studerar jag på distans 50% 

 

Många tack! 

-LiquidSoil 

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  1. Substantiv
  2. Adjektiv
  3. Verb
  4. Adverb
  5. Räkneord
  6. Pronomen
  7. prepositioner
  8. Konjunktioner
  9. Subjunktioner
  10. Interjektioner
  11. Infinitiv
  12. Numerus
  13. Omljud
  14. Pluskvamperfekt
  15. Etc

r/Svenska 7d ago

Text and translation help Lyssna på svenska

39 Upvotes

Hej,

I run Lyssna på svenska, a free podcast for people learning Swedish.

The episodes are spoken in slow and clear Swedish and include full transcripts. They are aimed mainly at learners around A2–B2 level and cover Swedish everyday life, culture and society — for example fika, lagom, Midsummer, Jantelagen and BankID.

You can listen and read the transcripts here:

https://lyssnapasvenska.se/

The podcast is also available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music and other podcast platforms.

I have also created a separate page for teachers who would like to use the episodes in their lessons:

https://lyssnapasvenska.se/for-teachers/

I hope it can be a useful listening resource for some of you. Feedback from both learners and teachers is welcome.