Hen – the debated Swedish pronoun

A note on Swedish hen You may have heard of the gender neutral Swedish pronoun “hen“. Sweden have been debating this during the past decade. Some people feel strongly about it. So what’s the fuss all about? Swedish gender and pronouns The Swedish language, like German, used to have three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and […]

Swedish vowels – hard and soft

Swedish vowels As you may already know, the Swedish language has 9 vowels. They are: A, E, I, O, U, Y, Å, Ä, and Ö. Note that y is always a vowel in Swedish! However, there is another way of grouping the vowels, rather than just alphabetically. This grouping is according to whether they are ‘soft’ […]

The Swedish sin

The Swedish sin: reflexive possessive pronouns Have you come across the words sin, sitt and sina in Swedish and feel confused about them? Let’s talk about the Swedish sin! I’m joking a bit when I call it The Swedish Sin. This phrase is an internationally known phenomenon that has influenced foreigners’ views on Swedish women […]

Dropped letters in Swedish

Dropped letters in Swedish We have a saying in Sweden that goes Har man sagt A får man säga B (If you’ve said A, you should say B). However, this doesn’t translate into how Swedes actually speak; the saying continues with …så får vi C vad D E (…and we’ll see what it is). The […]