Hi everyone! If you're currently learning Swedish, visit SwedishPod101 ( bit.ly/Swedishpod101 ) for a HUGE collection of audio/video lessons for students of all levels. I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do! A free lifetime account gives you access to lots of content, and then if you want their entire library you can upgrade. For 33 other languages, check out my review! langfocus.com/innovative-language-podcasts/ (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee) ************** Note that there's an error in the video. In the sentence "Stekaren blev lack för någon baxade hans champagne" the version written on the screen says "sin" instead of "hans" (though the speaker's voice is correct). That's because I accidentally used an old version of the sentence.
Seems to me the use of the prefix o- as a negation in place of not is a lot like the English prefix un- though English is more mixed up in this as we change the prefix depending on the word being negated in some cases, such as substituting il- in place of un- when negating words beginning with l eg illegal/illegitimate rather than unlegal/unlegitimate. Of course, things get even more complex with loan words, greek loan words often retaining the greek anti- prefix for their negation.
One of my favourite expressions is ”Intresseklubben antecknar”. Its used ironically when someone is talking about something that you find to be irrelevant or uninteresting, sort of like “Cool story, bro” although i’d say it packs a bit more of a punch than the latter. It literally translates to “The interest club will make a note”. With the speaker being the non existent “interest club”, of course.
I've also heard the derivations "Min intressesmurf hoppar" (My interest-smurf jumps) or "Aj! Jag fick en intressepil i ögat" (Ouch! I got hit in the eye by an interest arrow).
Two more idioms: "There's a dog buried here." (Det ligger en hund begraven här) - meaning that something is not quite right, fishy. "Now you've planted your last potato!" (Nu har du satt din sista potatis!) - meaning "now I've got you!", or "now you're screwed!".
There is similar idiom in Russian. But it's "That's where a dog buried" (Vot gde sobaka zarita) which means "here is the deal", "that was the reason", "that's what it is" and so on
@@LithiumRoot Same in Lithuanian "Štai kur šuo pakastas" which is identical (translation and meaning). Though most likely we borrowed this one from Russian.
As a swedish speaker, my favourite slang is: "Finns det hjärterum, finns det sjtärterum" (Direct translation, if there is room in the heart, there is room for the butt. Meaning: You can always squeeze in a few extra people in a cramped space if you realy want to)
@@exerceyo4405 can mean both but patrik's are better. But would remove cramped space becuse you can use it for like inviting people to an event or somthing to.
Great videos for learning Swedish. Hardest is most people in Sweden wants to speak English all the time. Regarding 3:46. I think "vaska" is derived from "vask, - en" which is the word for kitchen sink.
Rabarber är standard. Jag hörde att det är omvandlad "embargo". Lägga embargo på något. Från början var ordet "embargo" nytt och det lätt för folk som annat - som rabarber.
Haven’t seen this one in the comments yet: “Smaken är som baken. Delad.” Translates: “Taste is like the behind. Split.” It is most often used when two people have “a friendly dissagreement”. When translating it to another language it really emphasizes the madness of the idiom.
In Portuguese (in Brazil, at least) we have something similar: "gosto é igual cu, cada um tem o seu", which translates literally to "taste is like assholes: everyone has their own".
@@Hattes yes, "sitta med skägget i brevlådan" means "being in a precarious situation", not necessarily created by yourself. "Skitit i det blå skåpet" also means that you are in trouble, but it's entirely your own fault.
There should be a variation of that that goes, "braid in the letterbox", because of Germanic beard braids and women's braids being historically relevant there.
”Den dagen den sorgen” is one of my favorite idioms, it translates too that day that sorrow. It is similar to ”We will cross that bridge when we get there”. You use it when you have to do something but instead you put it on the backburner until it becomes relevant
The funniest Swedish idiom (though not common) is "Jaga någon med en blåslampa" which translates to "Chase someone with a blowtorch". It means to stress someone.
This is actually really helpful for me as a Norwegian, because I understand most all Swedish words when Swedish is spoken formally, but a lot of these slang words are new to me.
What's catches me off guard with norwegian is what we call 'false friends' meaning we have and, by the looks of it, use a word in the same way but they mean different things. Like "roligt", it's "fun" in sweden and "take it easy" in norway. Otherwise it's mostly you dialects that makes it hard. Some sounds like Swedish entirely, and some are inaudible sounds.
Yes. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus because it's my responsibility to check, but the person who suggested that idiom to me wrote it as "cabin" and I went with it. (It wasn't the guy who did the recording).
@@Langfocus This reply prompted me to research the phrase "throw [somebody] under the bus", and it turns out it's much newer than I thought - first attested under 40 years ago! Now, I wonder how you would say that in Swedish... ?
@@oliverraven we'd probably just say "skylla ifrån sig" ("blame someone else"), or "låta någon bära hundhuvudet" (to let someone wear the dog's head").
I'm on a kayak in the southern Stockholm area right now. I picked up my phone to see what time it is, but then I noticed you uploaded another video about my language so now I am watching this on the water.
I do not speak or learn Swedish but I know and love one expression: tårta på tårta. Literally it translates as 'cake on cake' and means tautology, unnecessary repetition.
And the similar _grädde på moset_ (whipped cream on the apple sauce) means meaningless luxury, more or less, while _lök på laxen_ (onion on the lox/salmon) can stand for either a tasteless combination, or just something bad in general.
A related one is "cream on the mash" ("grädde på moset"), which is sort of the positive version the cake-on-cake take. You can say the same, more mysteriously, by saying "onion on the salmon" ("lök på laxen").
@@danhanqvist4237 Jag trodde f ö som dig att det handlade om potatismos,. Språksidor på nätet hävdar äppelmos, vilket gör att det tappar lite innebörden för min del (smaklösheter). Dock lätt att föreställa sig flera olika etymologier för sådana här uttryck, även om endast en blir officiell.
I'll second that. Although "vaska" can mean "to pan (for eg. gold)", the sense/use mentioned in the video is derived from "(en) vask", meaning "(kitchen) sink". That's where you ask (tell) the waiter/bartender to pour out that second bottle of Champagne you ordered, if you're a spoiled rich kid from Stockholm (or wannabe "stockholmare"). No normal/sane person likes a "stekare", yet the expression ("att vaska") has nonetheless caught on during the last ten years or so, and is now used among young people in general, expressing a generalised meaning along the lines of "to get rid of / discard / throw away".
@@patrikliljegren4068 Precis. Konstant solbränna, vare sig den kommer av solande i solarium, liggandes i solen på yachten, eller solsemestern på vart fan de nu åker (förutom Gotland) 😁
And "vaska" means "to wash off/to rinse in water", hence "vaska guld"- you wash off the dirt the gold is mixed with. The noun "vask" as in "sink" is simply the place where you wash or rinse stuff. So "vaska champagne" is slang for "pour the champagne in the sink".
@@realbacon In another thread about the same thing, someone pointed out that "att vaska" and "to wash" are actually cognates (i.e. historically related). This claim is supported by Hellquist (*the* guy (book) when it comes to Swedish etymology), see runeberg.org/svetym/1189.html
Is not the best translation here "crossing the creek for water"? "Go over" is the direct translation but I think "crossing" is the right one. I am usely not a granar natze. I just haid to say That.
Niiiice! Two Swedish videos in a row. Good stuff! I've been longing for this. Something I think would have been important to add here is the sheer amount of slang words we've got from Romani, from the secret "language" called "Månsing" spoken by salesmen who travelled from village to village, and from "Knoparmoj" spoken by chimney sweepers. Many words from these three got a prominent role in the old Stockholm dialect, which is basically dying out now, however A BUNCH of words are still used today and a few found their way into the general slang reportoire outside of Stockholm. Like "tjej" (from Romani) which means "young woman", "spänn" (from Månsing) meaning 1 Swedish krona (Sweden's currency), "fika" (from Månsing and probably one of the most famous Swedish words among learners) meaning a coffee break. Other words I personally use and barely see as slang myself (coming from the Stockholm area), because they are so commonly used, are: sno (steal), tjacka (buy), stålar (money), brallor (pants), dojor (shoes), lattjo (fun/funny) and many more. By the way, "lack", which was used in the video, comes from "Månsing".
Ah are you reffering to söderslang? Söderslang is very litteral for example "jacken" means eyes and "telefon jack" is that hole in thr wall you plug your phone trough and thr two holes look like eyes. Or spiror plural wich means roughly a short staff like kings have but those could look like legs wich is ehat its used for.
I'd actually describe that idiom to mean; to invite disaster by mentioning a possible mode of failure. My favourite is "(Bli) Pissad i ögat" lit. (to be) Pissed in the Eye, meaning, be deceived or lied to.
Interesting. The meaning is the same in German and also used in German. "Den Teufel an die Wand malen." (Translated: Drawing/Painting the devil on the wall) It's used when someone panicks and strongly believes or imagines something really bad will happen.
Langfocus! As a swede I have to say that I’m mighty impressed by your knowledge of the swedish language :) Also; Im almost equally impressed with your knowledge of all the languages that you cover 💪🏻 Keep up the good work!
Speaking about alcoholic beverages (and physics), if yours has 10° GL or above, it may look oily in a glass, as same as you can see in wine or whiskey. Not sure about beer, tho.
A couple of points: These examples are very localised to Stockholm. Slang and idioms vary greatly throughout the territory where people speak Swedish. There may also be age differences. I my generation, "baxa" is a not very polite way of saying you're having sexual intercourse. The word "tjacka" means to buy something in Stockholm but to sell something in Gothenburg. I don't agree that "bira" comes from the Italian "birra". Stockholm has a long history as a very German city (like most cities around the Baltic). Many words in Stockholm slang have a German base (like "vurre", meaning a sausage or hot-dog, from "Wurst"). It is much more likely that "bira" comes from "Bier" (as does the Italian word). When the boiled pork is fried something serious is about to happen, for instance, if you get caught with your fingers in the jam jar (which is another idiom, which means getting caught red-handed). Not sure if young people say it any more, but I can say that someone has "gnomes up in the attic" ("han har tomtar på loftet"). That means that the guy isn't thinking quite straight.
One favorite of mine is the swedish word "kalabalik" which means uproar in swedish. It comes from Turkish meaning crowded / people gathering. History comes from when the Swedish king Karl XII was captured in Bender in 1713. See "Kalabaliken i Bender".
As a Swede who grew up in Germany this is a nice video to help me relate more to Swedish slang which I wasn't exposed to a whole lot in my teens except through family. Thanks, Paul!
Not really. It can we used whenever you're a bit nervous (but not panicking) like before you are going to a job interview, getting on stage, opening an important letter etc.
@@tomaslundstrom4622 that's true but I'm not connecting it to that as first thing. Would say job interview is secondary and anxious feeling overall is kind of wrong
In my surrounding its used in the context of the feeling in your gut when you are really nervous and/or anxious, no matter the situation. For example if you are very anxious before performing for example a concert solo, someone might say that you have "Fjärilar i magen" and you should instead try to have "Is i magen" or something, but it most definitely is used in more contexts than being in love or having a crush.
This isn't so much slang as it is a meme among Swedish speakers when speaking English, but the words "palla" and "ork/orka" are notoriously hard to translate yet deeply relatable, thus you get Swenglish like "I do not palla" or "I have no ork". These words refer to one's energy and ability to cope with or manage a situation or task. In English you might say "I can't do it" or "I don't have the energy".
It can also mean a minor form of "stealing" as in "Att palla äpplen" = To steal apples (from someones garden). A tradidtion of school kids through the ages.
Orka basically has to be re-written depending on context if you're translating: Jag orkar inte lyfta stenen. - I'm not strong enough to lift the stone. Jag orkar inte springa ett maraton. - I don't have stamina enough to run a marathon. Jag orkar inte springa. - I'm too tired to run. Jag orkar inte jobba. - I don't have the energy to work. Jag orkar inte lyssna på ditt gnäll. - I don't want to listen to your whining. Jag orkar inte med dig just nu. - I can't deal with you just now. Jag orkar bara inte. - I just can't be bothered. Jag orkar inte leva längre. - I don't have the will to live anymore. Jodå, du orkar! - Yes, you can! Meh, orka liksom. - I strongly object to performing this task because I think it's a waste of time.
O-bra, or obra, is typical of some Northern Swedish dialects, E.G Jag har o-varit - I have not been. Han var o-hemma, He was not at home. This type of negations are very rare - rather non-existant in Southern Sweden. Hans Strömberg Stockolm
I would say that "obra" is a rather (very) unusual form except perhaps among certain groups of young men. Often the use correlates with a kind of all-pervading/constant use of (in my opinion tediously overused) irony/sarcasm found perhaps primarily among young men in their late teens, or early twenties. It's a bit of a stretch to refer to it as "slang", but I guess that's what Paul was getting at in the video(?). 🙂
Patrik Liljegren I’d have to agree with that. It’s something you would say if someone said something really surprising that left you dumbfounded. «Trump blev just president» «Släng dig i väggen»
3:27 The Swede said "stekaren blev lack för någon baxade hans champagne". The text written out has the incorrect personal pronoun "sin", instead. If you use the pronoun "sin" in this situation, it means more like "the rich guy got angry because someone stole their champagne". That means that "sin" refers back to "someone" instead of "the rich guy". As for my favourite idiom, it has to be "att ana ugglor i mossen". Literally means "to suspect owls in the bog". Using this means that you suspect mischief. It comes from a Danish expression ”ulve i mosen” (wolves in the bog), but in some regional dialects it is pronounced as "uler", that possibly was confused by the Swedes as "uller" (owls). It had a connection to the old folklore saying that murdered children buried in a forest turn into bog owls.
Yeah, didn't notice it at first, sin is for something belonging to the subject and hans is for something belonging to someone else aka object. Someone is the subject in that part of the sentence so it must be hans. Guess reflective pronouns could be hard to understand for the speakers of languages without them.
“Någon baxade hans champagne” - “Someone stole his champagne” “Någon baxade sin champagne [tillbaks]” - “Someone stole their own champagne [back from him]”, implying the champagne was stolen goods in the first place and the real owner just went and took it back :-P
Swedish here “vaska” with the meaning “ordering two bottles of champagne and pouring one out” doesn’t have anything to do with gold panning but is instead about pouring it out in the kitchen sink. The sink is called “vasken” in swedish so “att vaska” means pouring it out in the sink in kitchen terminology.
”När man talar om trollet så står det i farstun” => when you talk about the troll it stands in the hallway. The sence that when you talk to someone about somone else they are likely to show up...
Stockholm slang is always the best, with long evolving origins. Take ”Tja” (pronounced “Cha”, means hello) for example. It comes from “tjena”, which is short for “tjenare”, which in turn is how you pronounce “tjänare” (servant) in a working class Stockholm dialect. The use of “servant” as a greeting comes in turn from an old expression “er ödmjuke tjänare” (Your humble servant) used by the working class towards the upper classes.
Fan jag visste inte det här men det borde ju stämma med tanke på hur logiskt det låter. Och ja, du har fan i mig rätt när du säger att Stockholmsslanget är bäst, här är några av mina favoriter: att kila stadigt = att ha fast sällskap Har'u vässa' bulan? = Har du klippt dig? E'ru bäng i bulan? = är du dum i skallen? Bängbula = dumskalle att vara dyngrak/ att vara på kanalen/ att vara packad = att vara full Dra in hakan! / Släpp sargen! = lägg ned Bolma = röka (Han stod o' bolma' som en jä 'lla skorsten!) Kväsare = någon som e stöddig (uttalas: kveeesare)
“Ha en räv bakom örat: “To have a fox behind the ear” = To be cunning. 🦊 “Kasta pärlor för svin = “To cast pearls to swines”. When you give away something meaningful which goes unappreciated.
At least 400 Demogorgons Might be but it’s a common expression in the Swedish language in Sweden in 2020. Which was the question of today. (Languages are not frozen in time :)
Similar idiom in the Bengali language to your second one: To dangle a pearl necklace from the neck of a Chimpanzee - Someone possessing something which he or she doesn't deserve
A lot of swear words in Swedish have a ”cleaner” counterpart. You may say ”dra åt skogen”/”go to the wood” instead of ”dra åt helvete”/”go to hell” or you may say ”järnspikar” (literally ”iron nails”) instead of ”jävlar” (lit. ”devils”). In the latter case, the beginnings of the words sound alike.
One of my favourites is a slang for McDonlads, restaurang gyllene måsen, resturant the golden seagull. As the McDonlads logos looks like a classical child drawing birds in the background.
No no, "get" does not refer to 'goat' in this sentence. It is another deprecated old Norse word which I don't remember the meaning of at the moment but I think it has to do with cushion.
Not explicitly related, but in spanish the verb "echar" is used similarly. It literally means to throw/lob but in the context of "echar un vistazo" (lit. to throw a glance) it means to have a quick look at.
"Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död" = "The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead" Used to describe a very stupid or mindless person. Also implies that someone's actions are done on autopilot without any thought.
@@veronicag.805 That one's great too. I think there are a looooot of idioms describing the same exact meaning for this, but now that I'm string to think of more, I can't think of any. I guess my light is on buy noone's home, lol.
Wait, I can think of one. "Han har inte alla hästarna hemma" = "He does not have all his horses at home (in place)" allthough that one has a connotation of craziness also.
The best one i've heard so far is "Han har gömt sig men det är ingen som räknar till 100". Yet another way of saying that someone isn't the sharpest tool in the shed :) It translates to "He's hiding, but there's no one counting to 100" referring to Hide and Seek :D
Stefan Boström Madame Heinz This is actually an error in translation, where the old Norse word for wolves, “ulver”, was confused with “uver”, owls. So it actually should be “wolves in the bog” which makes more sense if you suspect danger. The misunderstanding has however stuck around throughout history.
In Turkish there is "cami duvarına işemek" which literally means "to pee on the mosque wall" It is when someone does an exceedingly stupid action on purpose
In Brussels there is a church (Eglise St.-Catherine) with an urinal attached to the exterior wall, because people were peeing against it anyway. 'Wildplassen' aka 'wild' peeing is seen as an act of liberty/manhood in Belgian culture, with Manneken Pis as the ultimate symbol.
In french we have "it's like peeing in a violin" (c'est comme pisser dans un violon) wich means doing something useless believing that it has some effect
In danish there is "gøre i nælderne" meaning taking a dump in the nettles, which is a horrible idea. I suspect that swedish has the same idiom since nettles also grow there.
@@ivanskyttejrgensen7464 In Swedish, that would literally be "att göra i nässlorna". Never heard anything similar in Swedish though... Någon som har bättre koll än mig kanske? 🙂
Thank you Langfocus for all the great videos! They have helped me a lot! There is another fun expression which probably is very old considering its context: "Jag har en gås oplockad med honom/henne/den personen" which translates to: "I have a goose unplucked with him/her/that person". No one really uses it anymore but it means that you have unfinished business with a person (the person you're supposedly gonna pluck a goose with). Hilarious. Keep up the great work!
Ha're, also Ha de', as in, Ha det (Have it) which is shortened from Ha det gott (Have it good), or gött as we tend to say around Gothenburg. A common way to say bye similarly to Have a nice day.
I think we have gotten that from Norwegian who uses that as their standard way of saying Goodbye. I've noticed that we in the west part of Sweden have a few words that are similar in Norwegian, and that someone from Stockholm wouldn't use.
Congrats on 1 million subscribers by the way, Paul! "Jag möblerar om plytet på dig", lit: "I'll rearange the face on you". With plytet being an older word for face. Möblerar as in rearanging furniture. "Dra på trissor!", lit: "Pull on pulleys (I believe). Example: "Dra på trissor, I won the lottery!"
I see no honourable mention to the göteborska (gothenburgian) "Är du go, eller?", meaning something like "are you good in the head?" (read: "Are you dumb?"). Usually follows after someone says or does something weird or dumb. It is so defining of the göteborg (gothenburg) dialect that people who make fun of said dialect, or if göteborg is in any way mentioned, usually just say this phrase over and over to each other. Also, a "plätt" isn't really a pancake. It's more like a miniature pancake, which makes it easier to make than regular pancakes. That's why it's "easy as a plätt".
I think the Finnish version of "You've made your bed, now lie in it." Is pretty neat due to our grammar and is having a distinct verb for making ones bed. "Niin makaat kuin petaat." "(So) (you lie) (as) (you make a bed)"
As a swede I especially liked the explanations how some slangs came to be =) One idiom, probably already written in this comment section by now, is "I anticipates (have a feeling there's) owls in the bog". It depends on context but can be simplified as an anticipation something bad happened, going on or will happen. After a quick research before posting this I read it has Danish origin!
Some common expressions: Tala är silver, tiga är guld. 'Speaking is silver, being silent is gold' Ensam är stark 'One is strong alone' Ju fler kockar desto sämre soppa 'the more chefs there are, the worse the soup becomes' Själv är bäste dräng 'the best farmhand is (works) by himself'
English versions of two of those: "Speech is silver, silence is golden" "Too many cooks spoil the broth" And I would translate the others: "Alone is strong" "The best farmhand is oneself"
2:22 The word is 'bra' is slowly disappearing and being replaced in many contexts by 'god'. This is happening to many Swedish words in favour of alternatives which sound more like English equivalents. A few examples: 'tillfällig' is being replaced by 'temporär', 'snabb' > 'kvick', 'regelbunden' > 'regulär', 'laglig' > 'legal', 'rimlig', > 'resonabel' 'upprepa > 'repetera', 'sammanhang' > 'kontext', 'dödlig' > 'fatal' etc., etc. Many of these changes, of course, are to words which were already part of the Swedish vocabulary. but the ones which resemble English words are taking over and taking over quickly. Some of them were "false friends" when I was learning Swedish. An example: I was told that there was a word 'konfirmera' in Swedish but it was only used in special contexts. Now you hear (and read) Swedes using it instead of 'bekräfta'. 'Ordinär' is another Swedish word which is going from special usage to general usage and taking over from 'vardaglig'/'vanlig'. Just yesterday I heard a Swedish football commentator say that a team must have 'praktiserat' that free kick on their training ground. I don't think the trend is so surprising. American cultural domination and the internet are probably the root causes. What I do find surprising is the speed at which the change is taking place. You hear middle-aged and even old people phoning into radio programmes, for example, and using words like 'publik/publiken' instead of "allmän'/'allmänheten', 'separat' for 'skild', 'vinst' för 'seger', 'simpel' för 'enkel' etc. You know that these older people have probably changed their choice of words fairly recently so that it's not just the younger generation making the change. And won't it be interesting for linguists and lexicographers to follow the fate of expressions like 'segerns sötma' and 'segersvit' etc. once 'vinst' has ousted 'seger' to describe a winning performance. They'll almost certainly stay the same while the other word takes over in everyday Swedish.
As a native Swede, I find this comment a bit exaggerating. Although there has been an increase in anglicisms or use of Swedish words that resemble their English counterparts in some linguistic domains, like specialised fields such as sports, finance or ads, it is difficult to get a sense if speakers have actually altered their vocabularies in to be more English-like, and if so to what degree. Media is generally trend sensitive and a lot more prone to use what is considered trendy also when it comes to language, whereas proper language change with one word taking over at the cost of another takes a lot longer since it needs to reach a big group of speakers in order to become established. This is a process which is not linear, but can go back and forth. It is difficult If not impossible to decide in the present which perceived changes are permanent changes, and which are just temporary. Trends come and go, and if a trendy term doesn't reach a larger group of speakers it is not likely that it will become permanent, even if it might seem like it will. I very rarely hear people using 'god' instead of 'bra', 'kvick' instead of 'snabb', 'repetera' instead of 'upprepa' or 'fatal' instead of 'dödlig'. To me they feel rather old fashioned to be honest, and I haven't taken notice of any increased use of them neither among my friends nor in society at large. Anecdotal evidence, but like I said it's hard to analyse language change right when it's happening, and we do also take notce of diffent notice of different aspects of it. And no matter what changes may come, we can be sure thar language will always change no matter what we do or think about it :)
While Swedish language is becoming more anglified I don't recognize myself in any of the examples you mentioned, and I agree with above comment that a lot of them sound actually really old fashioned. While "konfirmera" is very seldom used as in place of bekräfta, I can imagine Swedes say "confirm-a", using the english pronunciation and all but adding the "-ah" at the end as to swedify it, this I hear all the time such as join-a, merge-a, game-a etc
Many of the stuff you mentioned seems wrong to me as a native Swede, or at least like a non issue. "Bra" being replaced by "god"? what? No. Tell me the context in this case, because i cant see how you can mix these words up. "Allmänheten" is very far from the meaning of "publiken". "Allmänheten" means "the public". You use it to talk about most of the people in Sweden for example. The word "publiken" means "The crowd" or "The onlookers" (or similar) and is mostly used for describing people at a music concert or similar smaller event type things. You could say something like "Det är inte i allmänhetens intresse" which basically means "Its not in the best interest of the people" or "Its not in the best interest of the public". You would not really use the word "publiken" in this way, but you could say "Publiken vill se något roligt", which means "The crowd wants to see something funny". I cant see how they are even comparable words since they have totally different meanings. Perhaps they had different meanings a long time ago, but i have never in 30 years heard it used differently. "Temporär" is not replacing "tillfällig", it's just that they are synonyms. You have words like "Övergående" and "provisorisk" that are very similar as well. Lets say you wanted to say you are only living temporary in an apartment, you can say all of these: "Jag bor bara här tillfälligt" "Jag bor bara här temporärt" "Jag bor bara här provisoriskt" "Detta är ett övergående boendearrangemang" alternatively something like "Jag bor bara här under en övergångsperiod" . Snabb/Kvick: Synonyms, but they have slightly different connotations. You also have words like "rapp" and "hastig" which can be used in similar ways. "kvick" can also mean "Witty", "Funny". If someone is running very fast you would 99% of the time say they are "snabb", not "Kvick". On the other hand, if you are referencing that someone thought of something fast, in response to a question perhaps, you would almost always use the word "Kvick" instead of "Snabb".
As a native Swede, nobody says temporär, kvick, regulär, legal, resonabel, repetera, kontext or fatal where I live. Hell, i didn't even know that 'fatal', 'regulär' and 'legal' were considered words in Swedish. And also 'kvick' is extremely old fashioned.
@@DwarfenBlizzard Swedish is by all means a living, dynamic and healthy language. If you look through the recent history (150 years) you will find that many words have come and gone. The swedish academy of language don't say that what they put in their text books are what the language *is*. Their job is only to describe it as good as they can at a given point in time. If enough people use a word it will be a part of the swedish language. I got a bit of a shock when I moved to Norway. Here it's not really like that. They even got what is called a language police. You can't name your kid after swedish principles. First name, middle name and surname. If it doesn't match up with "normal" norwegian dubble names it's a no go. And no..It wasn't anything "funky". A bit of an odd story is a village that was founded in the 1600's. It had to change name. The name was deemed more 'Danish' than Norwegian. No-one have ever called it anything else and it was founded during danish rule of Norway. But there you go...
One thing to note, sweidsh speakers rarely pronounce the J in 'ja' in informal speech, it becomes almost always 'ah'', people write it in texts like 'aa'
Some feedback, and also some expressions: The concept of "vaska" in Stureplan actually doesn't have anything to do with the formal verb "vaska" (panning). Instead, it is a verb made from the word "vask", which means kitchen sink. "Kitchen sinking" (vaska), then, means to just pour things out into the sink; to intentionally discard something valuable because you can. Secondly, "skitit i det blå skåpet": "skåp" means cabinet, not cabin. Lastly, I'd like to quote my former boss who basically spoke in idioms. During a meeting, he actually said this, I remember it clear as day, even though it was over ten years ago: "Nu måste vi trolla med knäna och komma in i matchen så vi kan göra det här ända in i kaklet. Annars får vi en påse skridskor." Literal translation: "Now we have to make magic with our knees and get into this ballgame so we can do this all the way into the tiles. Otherwise, we'll have a bag of skates." Idioms used: "Make magic with your knees", same expression as "bend over backwards" in English; that something requires incredible effort. "Get into the ballgame". Quite self-explanatory. You're losing the game - get your game together and turn it around. "All the way into the tiles": to completely do something, opposite of half-assed. What this has to do with tiles (as in wall tiles), I have no idea. "Bag of skates": for some reason, this means something bad or undesirable. As far as I've been able to read up on the expression, it originally was a funny adaptation of "not my cup of tea" in English (not my bag of skates), i.e., "not my thing". It can be used in both meanings today.
Jag tror att "ända in i kalket" är en gammal simterm som refererar att man inte ska sluta simma för ens sista simtaget (där då handen möter den kaklade bassängväggen).
@@er6946 "för ens" skall vara förrän. Från ordet "förr" som i detta fallet betyder tidigare. Precis som i uttrycket "ju förr desto bättre" Förrän = förr än, fast sammansatt.
One of my favourite swedish idioms is: "Många bäckar små..." which is a shorter version of "Många bäckar små bildar en å" which means "many small creeks creates a river", or something like that. There is an english equivalent but it seems to be really old because none of my english friends knows about it: "Many a little makes a mickle". It basically means that many small things can become something bigger. It's usually used in a cautionary manner.
Well ... it's not really English, per se. Meickle is a Scots word and means "much" or "a lot". You can find it used in the poetry of Robert Burns (My Tocher's the Jewel). It's pronounced 'mickle', despite the spelling.
@@Kathkere I'm also very fond of that one, although I don't agree that it's usually in a cautionary manner. I find it's often used in regards to making small progress, but which over time grows into something great. Like saving money.
Just want to say you covered this very well even better than i expected and i respect that you took time to learn about this topic keep up the good work
Hey man, I recently noticed how much your Channel has grown, I still remember when you where starting and you were studying Tagalog. I'm happy for you success. Swedish is a very interesting language, I studied it for some months and the biggest problem I had was that even if direct translation from English was extremely useful, all the slang and idioms were things I had to actually study. Translation only takes you so far even if Swedish is easy to learn. I'm also starting with my polyglot channel, I hope I can provide as much value as you have been able to provide with yours. See you around!
This channel hasn’t grown since 2016 (about a year after I started). It just has more subscribers (which doesn’t mean anything). The number of views is the same, and the amount of money is the same. It’s not nearly as successful as people think when they look at the number of subscribers.
@@Langfocus Yea I forgot about the average amount of views per video (still not bad, all above 100k). And yea subs don't really mean anything -.-'. Still for a language focused channel, it is not bad. It seems like the only people who get big with languages on YT are people who sing, surprise strangers with their languages skills, do clickbaity language challenges and so on. I think that in my channel I will mix language learning with self-development, we'll see how that goes. Think that at least now you are well known, maybe you can leverage that fame in other ways, like having sponsors, Patreon, etc. Wish you the best my friend :)
Leva loppan. literally: living the flea. or living the life of a flea. it means to have some sense of luxury or atleast easy. Nu lever vi loppan. now we are living like a flea. this might be said if you are relaxing having cold ones with your pals, eating snacks and having a good time. but also it is a sign of luxury
It's hilarious to see these expressions being so rigorously analysed, but I was very impressed. I was constantly expecting you to get something wrong, because the nuances of slang can be hard to agree upon even among native speakers themselves. Watching this makes me trust that your content on languages I do *not* understand is equally trustworthy :)
Another slang, originally form another language, is "nema problema" - you'll hear Swedes saying it all the time, originally from Serbo-Croatian, with the same meaning - "there's no problem" or "it's alright".
"Ropa inte hej förrän du är över bäcken" - Don't say hello until you're over the stream - meaning: Don't take anything out in advance. "Måla fan på väggen" - Paint the devil on the wall - meaning: Making something out to be much worse than it has to be. "Gå över ån för vatten" - Cross the stream to get water - meaning: Making something more tedious than it has to be. "Mota Olle i grind" - Fend Olle off at the fence - meaning: Solving an issue before it becomes a problem. "Kasta ett getöga" - Throw a goats eye - meaning: To look closely at something. "Inte för allt smör i Småland" - Not for all the butter in Småland - meaning: Something you really don't want. "Hellre en fågel i handen än tio i skogen" - Rather a bird in your hand than ten in the forest - meaning: Be happy for what you've got. "Kasta inte sten i glashus" - Don't throw rocks in a glass house - meaning: Don't throw accusations where you're not in the right.
"Mota Olle i grind" - "Olle" is an old word for bull and not a name. A correct translation is "to meet the bull at the gate". Literally, to stop the bull from leaving the enclosure. "Kasta inte sten i glashus" does not mean what you wrote, it means to not shame others of things you do yourself. I.e. Do not be a hypocrite.
"Kasta inte sten i glashus" there are some weird variations of it "kasta inte vatten i badhus" don't throw water in a bathhouse or don't pee in a bathhouse
6:15 in Polish "Jak sobie pościelisz tak się wyśpisz" (how you make your bed, that quality sleep you will have) 7:03 in Poland we buy cats, not pigs in our unknown sacks 😆
Swedish: Det är inte farten som dödar, det är smällen English: It's not the speed that kills, it's the collision/the "bang" Bad translation: It's not the fart that kills, it's the smell.
Made famous by the Norwegian rally star Petter Solberg. Also famous for: Petter: “The rat was loose” English: “the steering wheel was loose” Norwegian: «Rattet var løst» Petter: “In Norway we rape after dinner” English: “in Norway we burp after dinner” Norwegian: «I Norge raper vi etter maten» Petter: “I have bad pigs in my dekk” English: “I have bad studs in my tires” Norwegian: «Jeg har dårlige pigger i dekkene mine» Petter: “I came with a great fart and dishappered as a prick upon the sky” English: “I came with great speed and disappeared like a dot in the sky” Norwegian: «Jeg kom med stor hastighet og forsvant som en prikk på himmelen»
@@linnea8753 It's a bit like our current State Epidemiologist. You don't need to take precautions until you're already sick, basically. A bit like: "It has not been established that seat belts save lives other than when people smash their cars".
Russian has also adopted кайф (kayf), apparently from Arabic, and it is now used widely among younger people, though here it means what it should - something really good and pleasing
stlurz can’t be that sure The version with it coming through Chechnya, Dagestan and other southern republics sounds way more likely to me Also it still is heard every day
I have a different theory for "vaska". A kitchen sink in swedish is called a "vask", and you denominalize the noun vask to the verb vaska, meaning that you pour the drink into the kitchen sink.
Thank you for making these videos, I've been looking forward to see my language here! Those expressions are fun. Just wanted to point out that some of the slang words are probably quite Stockholm centered. I've barely heard anyone say 'obra', but 'fet' is definitely in use everywhere. My contribution: Att få blodad tand - to get blooded tooth - To want more of something you just tried, often used with activities - "jag testade snowboard nu i helgen för första gången och har fått blodad tand. Jag har redan bokat nästa resa!"
"Good day axe handle" (god dag yxskaft) is a classic one. I believe its from a story and refers to something like giving an answer thats not related to the question.
I live in Sweden for more than a decade, I speak Swedish, Turkish, Arabic, English, and Farsi (Persian) as mother-tongue and am originally from Afghanistan. Aina might come from the Turkish to Swedish but I guaranty you that Aina (Mirror) is a Persian word. Of course, at least 10% of Turkish language is Persian or has Persian roots and a big percentage Arabic, Ottoman Turkish had even more Farsi and Arabic words. Nowadays a lot of words/slangs from middle eastern languages have entered Sweden due to immigration of middle eastern people to Sweden and especially Swedish teens use them. Another word that is used between Swedish teens/youth is Jalla (pronounced Yalla) which is an Arabic word that means come on or hurry up
A man from northern sweden goes to Stockholm, but on his way out of the trainstation he runs into a problem. As he reaches the doors, there are only entrances and no exits... " 'In' and 'out', aren't those the same things?"
5:05 the whole idiom is "ingen fara på taket såläng skorstenen står" "no danger on the roof as long as the chimney stands" I have NO idea why but That is the whole idiom.
I'm from northern Sweden, and something I really appreciate about a lot of northern dialects is that we have an equivalent of the English "put": "he", pronounced [heː]. In standard Swedish, rather than to "put" an object somewhere, you would specify *how* you put it there, i.e. laying, sitting, standing, etc.
Agreed. When I went to university we had a northerner teaching computer assembly language. He very enthusiastically explained that the "put" instruction is like "he" in Swedish. Most of my classmates were southerners and didn't have a clue what he was talking about! 😂
@@emmamemma4162 Though you also have the potential for confusion in cases where "he" is also a dialectal variant of "det", and stuff like the northern tendency to shorten words or contract them together, such as in the case of "he den", which becomes "he'n", as well as the use of words like "hänna" to mean "här". "He ä som he ä, ja sku ändå ha hett'n hänna."
@@wwklnd I see, very cool. Is it a little bit like "hon hade mjölk över hela bordet" meaning "she spilled milk all over the table", only that you use it for intended actions as well? My dialect (Central Ostrobothnia) also uses "he" for "it"/"det" (neuter nouns) and "ha" (masculine) or "ho" (feminine) for common nouns ("den"). The last sentence would be "He ir som he ir, ja sku äntå ha lagd a (or "e", if it's a female noun) eje" in my dialect.
I reacted to the word "baxa" which you described as stealing. I've never heard this before. Now some slang can be local and depend on what age you are in, but I see that it can apparently also mean stealing. The most common meaning (at least in Gothenburg and for a 55 year old like me) is to move with a more common meaning to move something that is heavier so you have to pry. There we then suddenly have a loss because you traditionally have to pry to break in somewhere. Stretch and Swedish "baxa" then have the same meaning. I still think that "baxa" mainly means to move something.
Here in Östergötland it means both. "baxa upp den, bara" - "Just manhandle it up there" and "baxa och kränga" - "steal and sell". For the non-swedish speakers, "kränga" literally means "wobble" or "sway" as in what a ship does in hard seas.
"No danger on the roof" was used during World War II. Soldiers were tasked with inspecting attics in apartment buildings in Stockholm. They would check if there was a lot of stuff and garbage stored there, something that was illegal during the world war period. If there was lots of stuff, and rubbish in the attic it was a fire hazard and in order to prevent any fire from jumping from one building to the next it needed to be cleared. If it was cleared at the time of inspection the soldier who was on the roof would yell down to the garbage collection crew waiting in the street, "Ingen fara på taket!". The garbage crew could then move on and place the truck and stop traffic at the next address. The soldier on the roof also moved on and slowly but surly the army made sure that no fire hazard was left in any apartment complex or building in Stockholm. No danger on the roof, no risk of fires or firestorms in case of a firebombing or sabotage etc.
Sorry this is not true. The expression older than World War II, there's even a film called "ingen fara på taket" from 1938. It has no specific origin. Original expression was "No danger on the roof as long as the chimney stands."
My favourite expression in Sweden is "Guld och gröna skogar" (Gold and green forests). It is used to refer to a promise that sounds too good to be true. For example: "There were people from finland that got fooled into concentration camps by the earlier communitic sovjet union. They were very poor at the time and were promised gold and green forests but ended up becoming slaves for the sovjet union". In this sentence, "gold and green forest" refers to a better life for them, where all their worries and problems are solved and gone, which obviously sounds too good to be true, as in, how likely is it that somebody suddenly just show up and solves all your problems for you? We often use this expression when we talk about how people got scammed, or when we talk about an area, workplace or lifestyle where reputation is highly overexaggorated.
"Vaska" does not refer to gold mining! The noun "vask" is a sink. Hence "vaska" i.e to sink means to pour down the sink. The idom to shit in the blue closet refers to that swedish people used to have their porcelin and other chinese wares in a blue closet. So it means that you have taken a shit on some pretty expensive things.
Quite right. And the noun "vask" comes from the verb "vaska" wich means to rinse something of. "Jag skall gå och vaska av mina händer" = "I will go and wash my hands" is a good example in these days ;)
Vaska champagnen = Sink the champagne (pour it the sink)... Vaska guld = wash or clean/separate the gold from gravel. Vaska in Scandinavian = Wash. They're all related but the meaning as shifted,
@@jaojao1768 We have had Romani people in Sweden and Finland for almost half a millennium. It is not so interesting really (or strange) since Romani is considered to be i minority language in Sweden.
You know im a swedish native but us having the word for "little girl" and "girlfriend" being the same really isn't a good idea now that i think about it. There is also no grammatical difference so its all up to context. That could get akward for non-fluent speakers
@@johnnorthtribe It took "us" more than 500 years though, to give Romani a politically correct status of "minority language". Before that Sweden pretty much ignored all variants of gypsy languages, or sometimes even tried to eradicate them, just like most nation states have done with small minority languages through history.
Here's a pretty dark but very commonly used (even more so than the formal word) from the North. "Kattstrypare" meaning Zip Tie in English, or Buntband in formal Swedish. Kattstrypare:s literal translation is "Cat Strangler" in English.
Never heard that expression and it gets 0 google hits. Rather it's a combination of 2 separate slang terms, "åka bulle" for take a cab and "deg" (dough) for money.
@@backelie both are examples of Stockholm slang, so that may be the reason. Calling a taxi "bulle" is unheard of in most of the rest of Sweden, while money = "deg" might have spread a bit more.
We got something about cows on ice in German, too: 'die Kuh vom Eis holen' - "to get the cow off the ice", meaning to resolve a difficult or dangerous situation
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Note that there's an error in the video. In the sentence "Stekaren blev lack för någon baxade hans champagne" the version written on the screen says "sin" instead of "hans" (though the speaker's voice is correct). That's because I accidentally used an old version of the sentence.
I'm your fan from India
Seems to me the use of the prefix o- as a negation in place of not is a lot like the English prefix un- though English is more mixed up in this as we change the prefix depending on the word being negated in some cases, such as substituting il- in place of un- when negating words beginning with l eg illegal/illegitimate rather than unlegal/unlegitimate. Of course, things get even more complex with loan words, greek loan words often retaining the greek anti- prefix for their negation.
What do you think when you hear the word Swedish ?
Girls : Felix
Boys : Gustav 10th
Me watching Paul Upload after a week: You're about 2 months too early
@Skrooge Lantay You already wrote this somewhere else and I replied to it.
One of my favourite expressions is ”Intresseklubben antecknar”. Its used ironically when someone is talking about something that you find to be irrelevant or uninteresting, sort of like “Cool story, bro” although i’d say it packs a bit more of a punch than the latter. It literally translates to “The interest club will make a note”. With the speaker being the non existent “interest club”, of course.
Thats hilarious
I've heard it as "intresseklubben noterar", which translates exactly the same.
The long version is "Intresseklubben noterar så att pennorna glöder" which means about "The interest club makes notes so fast so that the pens glow"
I've also heard the derivations "Min intressesmurf hoppar" (My interest-smurf jumps) or "Aj! Jag fick en intressepil i ögat" (Ouch! I got hit in the eye by an interest arrow).
I hate to be picky (not), but the literal translation is closer to "the interest club is taking notes" 🙃
Two more idioms:
"There's a dog buried here." (Det ligger en hund begraven här) - meaning that something is not quite right, fishy.
"Now you've planted your last potato!" (Nu har du satt din sista potatis!) - meaning "now I've got you!", or "now you're screwed!".
There is similar idiom in Russian. But it's "That's where a dog buried" (Vot gde sobaka zarita) which means "here is the deal", "that was the reason", "that's what it is" and so on
I need to use that second slang it sounds amazing!
A variation on the first one that I'm more familiar with is "Här ligger (det) en död hund begraven" (lit. "Here lies a dead dog buried").
@@LithiumRoot Same in Lithuanian "Štai kur šuo pakastas" which is identical (translation and meaning). Though most likely we borrowed this one from Russian.
One more Idioms:
"I'm taking a
roosterphone" (Jag tar mig en tupplur) - Meaning = Take a nap.
As a swedish speaker, my favourite slang is: "Finns det hjärterum, finns det sjtärterum" (Direct translation, if there is room in the heart, there is room for the butt. Meaning: You can always squeeze in a few extra people in a cramped space if you realy want to)
It's about not turning away guests, but OK ...
That looks difficult to pronounce
@@FindecanorNotGmail That's not what it's about lol. I't as @Patrik Dohmen said.
@@FindecanorNotGmail That could be a metaphorical extension of the term, but in its most literal sense it's about squeezing people into a small space.
@@exerceyo4405 can mean both but patrik's are better. But would remove cramped space becuse you can use it for like inviting people to an event or somthing to.
My favourite is "lägga rabarber på något", literally "to put rhubarb on something" but actually meaning "to get your hands on something"
Put the gloves on something (lägga väntarna på) is also an idiom with a similar meaning
Great videos for learning Swedish. Hardest is most people in Sweden wants to speak English all the time.
Regarding 3:46. I think "vaska" is derived from "vask, - en" which is the word for kitchen sink.
@@rhoddryice5412 You're right.
Tror nog aldrig jag har hört nån säga lägga rabarber på något,dock lägga labbarna på nåt.
Rabarber är standard. Jag hörde att det är omvandlad "embargo". Lägga embargo på något. Från början var ordet "embargo" nytt och det lätt för folk som annat - som rabarber.
Haven’t seen this one in the comments yet:
“Smaken är som baken. Delad.” Translates: “Taste is like the behind. Split.”
It is most often used when two people have “a friendly dissagreement”.
When translating it to another language it really emphasizes the madness of the idiom.
Finns även västsvensk variant som är Smaken är som röven, den är klöven!
Yep and it can also be used without the last word since it is implied
@@aularound Ha ha ha, den hade jag inte hört och ändå har jag bott i Västergötland i nästan hela mitt liv.
@@johnnyrosenberg9522När jag tänker efter så var det nog faktiskt en dalslänning som jag hörde den av först :)
In Portuguese (in Brazil, at least) we have something similar: "gosto é igual cu, cada um tem o seu", which translates literally to "taste is like assholes: everyone has their own".
One good one is "skägget i brevlådan" or "beard in the letterbox", means that you have been caught red handed, or similar to "hand in the cookie jar"
That's not how I understand the expression. To me it just means to be in a bad situation. Very similar to "skitit i det blå skåpet".
@@Hattes yes, "sitta med skägget i brevlådan" means "being in a precarious situation", not necessarily created by yourself. "Skitit i det blå skåpet" also means that you are in trouble, but it's entirely your own fault.
There should be a variation of that that goes, "braid in the letterbox", because of Germanic beard braids and women's braids being historically relevant there.
@@H4mmerofD4wn cognate gang
Yeah no it means to find oneself in a bad situation, unlucky, disappointed. We så that in Danish about the braids or the hair, not the beard.
”Den dagen den sorgen” is one of my favorite idioms, it translates too that day that sorrow. It is similar to ”We will cross that bridge when we get there”. You use it when you have to do something but instead you put it on the backburner until it becomes relevant
Wow, I didn't expect this right after you covered the Swedish language. Keep it up!
Me too
@Skrooge Lantay how can someone be proud about one of the worst places on earth?
Hi Bery, I recognise you from Cave of Linguists on Discord!
@Skrooge Lantay ok?
@@Terrus_38 Yo, I know you too lol. I haven't been very active there lately, and for the most part I stay in the minigame channels.
The funniest Swedish idiom (though not common) is "Jaga någon med en blåslampa" which translates to "Chase someone with a blowtorch".
It means to stress someone.
Quite common should I say.
Lol jag läste det som blå-slampa
att hota någon med smurf slampor
This is actually really helpful for me as a Norwegian, because I understand most all Swedish words when Swedish is spoken formally, but a lot of these slang words are new to me.
öhöhöhöhöhöh
What's catches me off guard with norwegian is what we call 'false friends' meaning we have and, by the looks of it, use a word in the same way but they mean different things. Like "roligt", it's "fun" in sweden and "take it easy" in norway. Otherwise it's mostly you dialects that makes it hard. Some sounds like Swedish entirely, and some are inaudible sounds.
"Blå skåpet" does not mean "blue cabin", it means "blue cabinet". So the background image is way off 😄
Yes. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus because it's my responsibility to check, but the person who suggested that idiom to me wrote it as "cabin" and I went with it. (It wasn't the guy who did the recording).
@@Langfocus This reply prompted me to research the phrase "throw [somebody] under the bus", and it turns out it's much newer than I thought - first attested under 40 years ago! Now, I wonder how you would say that in Swedish... ?
We’d say ”kasta någon framför bussen” - literally “throwing someone in front of the bus”.
@@oliverraven we'd probably just say "skylla ifrån sig" ("blame someone else"), or "låta någon bära hundhuvudet" (to let someone wear the dog's head").
@@johanung Är du säker?
I'm on a kayak in the southern Stockholm area right now. I picked up my phone to see what time it is, but then I noticed you uploaded another video about my language so now I am watching this on the water.
Do be careful
@@pacificcoastpiper3949 No worries, I am back on land
Lord Henroriro good
Hope you had a good time
The most Swedish comment possible! 😂
I do not speak or learn Swedish but I know and love one expression: tårta på tårta. Literally it translates as 'cake on cake' and means tautology, unnecessary repetition.
And the similar _grädde på moset_ (whipped cream on the apple sauce) means meaningless luxury, more or less, while _lök på laxen_ (onion on the lox/salmon) can stand for either a tasteless combination, or just something bad in general.
A related one is "cream on the mash" ("grädde på moset"), which is sort of the positive version the cake-on-cake take. You can say the same, more mysteriously, by saying "onion on the salmon" ("lök på laxen").
@@danhanqvist4237 Så du springer runt och kopierar andras exempel mer eller mindre rakt av? :D
@@herrbonk3635 Såg inte herr Bönks bidrag. Men great minds think alike.
@@danhanqvist4237 Jag trodde f ö som dig att det handlade om potatismos,. Språksidor på nätet hävdar äppelmos, vilket gör att det tappar lite innebörden för min del (smaklösheter). Dock lätt att föreställa sig flera olika etymologier för sådana här uttryck, även om endast en blir officiell.
I'm pretty sure that "vaska" comes from "vask" meaning "a sink", so the word is just a verbification of that.
I'll second that. Although "vaska" can mean "to pan (for eg. gold)", the sense/use mentioned in the video is derived from "(en) vask", meaning "(kitchen) sink". That's where you ask (tell) the waiter/bartender to pour out that second bottle of Champagne you ordered, if you're a spoiled rich kid from Stockholm (or wannabe "stockholmare"). No normal/sane person likes a "stekare", yet the expression ("att vaska") has nonetheless caught on during the last ten years or so, and is now used among young people in general, expressing a generalised meaning along the lines of "to get rid of / discard / throw away".
Håller med, även 'stekare' refererar till att snobbarna brukar glassa mycket i solen, inte att de gillar bbq och är fanatiska grillmeisters
@@patrikliljegren4068 Precis. Konstant solbränna, vare sig den kommer av solande i solarium, liggandes i solen på yachten, eller solsemestern på vart fan de nu åker (förutom Gotland) 😁
And "vaska" means "to wash off/to rinse in water", hence "vaska guld"- you wash off the dirt the gold is mixed with. The noun "vask" as in "sink" is simply the place where you wash or rinse stuff. So "vaska champagne" is slang for "pour the champagne in the sink".
@@realbacon In another thread about the same thing, someone pointed out that "att vaska" and "to wash" are actually cognates (i.e. historically related). This claim is supported by Hellquist (*the* guy (book) when it comes to Swedish etymology), see runeberg.org/svetym/1189.html
"Gå över ån efter vatten" literarily means to go over/across the creek for water and it's used when someone complicates things.
Den va jäkligt bra
«Gå over bekken etter vann» in Norwegian.
Is not the best translation here "crossing the creek for water"? "Go over" is the direct translation but I think "crossing" is the right one.
I am usely not a granar natze. I just haid to say That.
@@eventyraren if you made that last sentence like that purposely, then you are good at grinding gears. Otherwise, yes, correct.
Niiiice! Two Swedish videos in a row. Good stuff! I've been longing for this.
Something I think would have been important to add here is the sheer amount of slang words we've got from Romani, from the secret "language" called "Månsing" spoken by salesmen who travelled from village to village, and from "Knoparmoj" spoken by chimney sweepers. Many words from these three got a prominent role in the old Stockholm dialect, which is basically dying out now, however A BUNCH of words are still used today and a few found their way into the general slang reportoire outside of Stockholm. Like "tjej" (from Romani) which means "young woman", "spänn" (from Månsing) meaning 1 Swedish krona (Sweden's currency), "fika" (from Månsing and probably one of the most famous Swedish words among learners) meaning a coffee break.
Other words I personally use and barely see as slang myself (coming from the Stockholm area), because they are so commonly used, are: sno (steal), tjacka (buy), stålar (money), brallor (pants), dojor (shoes), lattjo (fun/funny) and many more.
By the way, "lack", which was used in the video, comes from "Månsing".
Fika is simply Kafi (variant of Kaffe = Coffee) spoken in reverse.
Hi Joakim!
@@hrlarson yes, so called "backslang"
@@jacquelineamelie5467 Hej Jacqueline
Ah are you reffering to söderslang? Söderslang is very litteral for example "jacken" means eyes and "telefon jack" is that hole in thr wall you plug your phone trough and thr two holes look like eyes.
Or spiror plural wich means roughly a short staff like kings have but those could look like legs wich is ehat its used for.
”Slå två flugor i en smäll”- Hit two flies in one slap literally, and it is equal to “Kill two birds with one stone”
LOL that exists in some form in literally every language in the world
Or the funny version, "Göra två flugor på smällen" (to make two flies pregnant) :) just a funny word joke with the slang for making someone pregnant.
@@hannajohansson4078 Get two flies knocked up
In German we say it the same way as you guys apparently! In English it sounds way too violent to me haha
I russian there's opposite idiom: " (don't) chase two hares (you'll catch none)". Means "don't spray actions, you can't succeed everything".
One of my favourites is "måla Fan på väggen" - literally "paint the Devil on the wall", means to imagine a worst-case scenario, often for no reason.
We have this in Hungarian :)
Ne fesd az ördögöt a falra! - Don't paint the devil on the wall! / Don't assume the worst.
The same in Finnish, maalata piruja seinälle.
It exists i German as well.
I'd actually describe that idiom to mean; to invite disaster by mentioning a possible mode of failure.
My favourite is "(Bli) Pissad i ögat" lit. (to be) Pissed in the Eye, meaning, be deceived or lied to.
Interesting. The meaning is the same in German and also used in German. "Den Teufel an die Wand malen." (Translated: Drawing/Painting the devil on the wall)
It's used when someone panicks and strongly believes or imagines something really bad will happen.
Langfocus!
As a swede I have to say that I’m mighty impressed by your knowledge of the swedish language :)
Also; Im almost equally impressed with your knowledge of all the languages that you cover 💪🏻
Keep up the good work!
Lol, these are funny false friends then;
"öl" - beer in Swedish
"Öl" - oil in German
:-D
Yeah haha I saw that i was thinking "oh yeah better stop drinking so much OIL. Not healthy for ya. "🤣
Ein Öl Bitte!
Speaking about alcoholic beverages (and physics), if yours has 10° GL or above, it may look oily in a glass, as same as you can see in wine or whiskey. Not sure about beer, tho.
Which is Ale in English then
In Romanian we have "a o lua pe ulei" (to take it on the oil) which means to get drunk. I guess oil and alcohol do mix
A couple of points: These examples are very localised to Stockholm. Slang and idioms vary greatly throughout the territory where people speak Swedish. There may also be age differences. I my generation, "baxa" is a not very polite way of saying you're having sexual intercourse. The word "tjacka" means to buy something in Stockholm but to sell something in Gothenburg. I don't agree that "bira" comes from the Italian "birra". Stockholm has a long history as a very German city (like most cities around the Baltic). Many words in Stockholm slang have a German base (like "vurre", meaning a sausage or hot-dog, from "Wurst"). It is much more likely that "bira" comes from "Bier" (as does the Italian word). When the boiled pork is fried something serious is about to happen, for instance, if you get caught with your fingers in the jam jar (which is another idiom, which means getting caught red-handed). Not sure if young people say it any more, but I can say that someone has "gnomes up in the attic" ("han har tomtar på loftet"). That means that the guy isn't thinking quite straight.
"gnoming up in the attic" is such a hilarious concept 😂😂
I've never heard anyone from Gothenburg say "tjacka" with either meaning
@@infiniteinfinite3315 It may be something older people say.
One favorite of mine is the swedish word "kalabalik" which means uproar in swedish. It comes from Turkish meaning crowded / people gathering. History comes from when the Swedish king Karl XII was captured in Bender in 1713. See "Kalabaliken i Bender".
These days it simply means chaos?
My teacher told me it meant many fish in one place because balik is Turkish for fish
”Stekaren blev lack för någon baxade hans champagne” är min nya favoritmening.
Äh, han köper ju bara en ny om han är en äkta stekare.
Jag skall försöka inkorporera den i något sammanhang framöver.
Haha min med
@@alphaprimus7794 1800-talet ringde och undrade varför du pratar så här i kommentarerna för en video om svenskt slang
Den mest stockholmska meningen i världen
"Inte mycket att hänga i julgranen" - literally 'not much to hang in the Christmas tree', used like 'nothing to write home about'
As a Swede who grew up in Germany this is a nice video to help me relate more to Swedish slang which I wasn't exposed to a whole lot in my teens except through family. Thanks, Paul!
"Fjärilar i magen" is mostly, if not only, used in context of being in love or having a crush - not having an anxious feeling.
Not really. It can we used whenever you're a bit nervous (but not panicking) like before you are going to a job interview, getting on stage, opening an important letter etc.
@@tomaslundstrom4622 that's true but I'm not connecting it to that as first thing. Would say job interview is secondary and anxious feeling overall is kind of wrong
Yes, imo it is a positive kind of nervousness
In my surrounding its used in the context of the feeling in your gut when you are really nervous and/or anxious, no matter the situation. For example if you are very anxious before performing for example a concert solo, someone might say that you have "Fjärilar i magen" and you should instead try to have "Is i magen" or something, but it most definitely is used in more contexts than being in love or having a crush.
Nope you are incorrect. Maybe it depends on where in sweden you live. I live in the west. In Gothenburg
This isn't so much slang as it is a meme among Swedish speakers when speaking English, but the words "palla" and "ork/orka" are notoriously hard to translate yet deeply relatable, thus you get Swenglish like "I do not palla" or "I have no ork". These words refer to one's energy and ability to cope with or manage a situation or task. In English you might say "I can't do it" or "I don't have the energy".
"I don't have the spoons" skulle kunna vara en motsvarighet men det uttrycket är ovanligt och "orka/palla" är betydligt mer lättvindigt.
“I can’t bother to..” might be better?
It can also mean a minor form of "stealing" as in "Att palla äpplen" = To steal apples (from someones garden). A tradidtion of school kids through the ages.
Orka basically has to be re-written depending on context if you're translating:
Jag orkar inte lyfta stenen. - I'm not strong enough to lift the stone.
Jag orkar inte springa ett maraton. - I don't have stamina enough to run a marathon.
Jag orkar inte springa. - I'm too tired to run.
Jag orkar inte jobba. - I don't have the energy to work.
Jag orkar inte lyssna på ditt gnäll. - I don't want to listen to your whining.
Jag orkar inte med dig just nu. - I can't deal with you just now.
Jag orkar bara inte. - I just can't be bothered.
Jag orkar inte leva längre. - I don't have the will to live anymore.
Jodå, du orkar! - Yes, you can!
Meh, orka liksom. - I strongly object to performing this task because I think it's a waste of time.
orka=orkar inte= cant be arsed, maybe
or that's how i've thought about it.
O-bra, or obra, is typical of some Northern Swedish dialects, E.G Jag har o-varit - I have not been. Han var o-hemma, He was not at home.
This type of negations are very rare - rather non-existant in Southern Sweden.
Hans Strömberg
Stockolm
Aha, that is why I rarely here them here (not being in Skäånä, though). Tack!
This is somewhat common in Hälsingland.
It is used extensively in the military, at least when I served. Maybe that's where I came from.
Jan Gelbrich you just literally explained how to pronounce the skånska å: äå. Tack!
I would say that "obra" is a rather (very) unusual form except perhaps among certain groups of young men. Often the use correlates with a kind of all-pervading/constant use of (in my opinion tediously overused) irony/sarcasm found perhaps primarily among young men in their late teens, or early twenties. It's a bit of a stretch to refer to it as "slang", but I guess that's what Paul was getting at in the video(?). 🙂
”Skåpet” is more like ”locker” than ”cabin”. A cabin is a ”stuga”. The word ”kabin” exists to but is used slightly differently.
Is stuga in Swedish the same as hytte in Norwegian ?
Nelson Van Alden I think so
@@ArvidOlson Weird that it's so different for such a similar languages.
@@thomasvan3786 We do also have the word "hytt" in Swedish, which also means cabin
he probably meant "cabinet" and not "cabin"
“Släng dig i väggen” literally means “throw yourself against the wall”, but is a way of saying “get lost” to someone.
I think the English Equivalens is "go and punch a wall". Telling someone to go and do something compleatly useless
In my opinion, it's more commonly used as "you gotta be f*king kidding me"
Patrik Liljegren I’d have to agree with that. It’s something you would say if someone said something really surprising that left you dumbfounded.
«Trump blev just president»
«Släng dig i väggen»
Audun Wangen that example made me laugh 😭😂
Never heard, if I wanted to tell someone to fuck off I'd say; Stritt åt fittan.
3:27
The Swede said "stekaren blev lack för någon baxade hans champagne". The text written out has the incorrect personal pronoun "sin", instead.
If you use the pronoun "sin" in this situation, it means more like "the rich guy got angry because someone stole their champagne". That means that "sin" refers back to "someone" instead of "the rich guy".
As for my favourite idiom, it has to be "att ana ugglor i mossen". Literally means "to suspect owls in the bog". Using this means that you suspect mischief.
It comes from a Danish expression ”ulve i mosen” (wolves in the bog), but in some regional dialects it is pronounced as "uler", that possibly was confused by the Swedes as "uller" (owls). It had a connection to the old folklore saying that murdered children buried in a forest turn into bog owls.
Yeah, didn't notice it at first, sin is for something belonging to the subject and hans is for something belonging to someone else aka object. Someone is the subject in that part of the sentence so it must be hans. Guess reflective pronouns could be hard to understand for the speakers of languages without them.
Hahah trodde att jag var den enda som märkte
The reflexive pronouns (sig, sin, sitt) keeps tripping people up. In younger generations they're almost losing it completely.
Thank you for pointing it out! Just like @Hanna Österlund I thought I was the only one noticing.
“Någon baxade hans champagne” - “Someone stole his champagne”
“Någon baxade sin champagne [tillbaks]” - “Someone stole their own champagne [back from him]”, implying the champagne was stolen goods in the first place and the real owner just went and took it back :-P
I like the idiom "visa var skåpet ska stå," literally "show where the cabinet should be." It means to be assertive/dominant.
Swedish here “vaska” with the meaning “ordering two bottles of champagne and pouring one out” doesn’t have anything to do with gold panning but is instead about pouring it out in the kitchen sink. The sink is called “vasken” in swedish so “att vaska” means pouring it out in the sink in kitchen terminology.
”När man talar om trollet så står det i farstun” => when you talk about the troll it stands in the hallway. The sence that when you talk to someone about somone else they are likely to show up...
speak of the devil and he shall appear
German has a few different versions of this one. They all use the devil, however; just like the English.
Often this is shortened to just “när man talar om trollen”
I've also heard it as "när man talar om trollen står trollmor i farstun", meaning when you speak of the trolls, the trollmother stands in the hallway
Stockholm slang is always the best, with long evolving origins. Take ”Tja” (pronounced “Cha”, means hello) for example.
It comes from “tjena”, which is short for “tjenare”, which in turn is how you pronounce “tjänare” (servant) in a working class Stockholm dialect. The use of “servant” as a greeting comes in turn from an old expression “er ödmjuke tjänare” (Your humble servant) used by the working class towards the upper classes.
Fan jag visste inte det här men det borde ju stämma med tanke på hur logiskt det låter. Och ja, du har fan i mig rätt när du säger att Stockholmsslanget är bäst, här är några av mina favoriter:
att kila stadigt = att ha fast sällskap
Har'u vässa' bulan? = Har du klippt dig?
E'ru bäng i bulan? = är du dum i skallen?
Bängbula = dumskalle
att vara dyngrak/ att vara på kanalen/ att vara packad = att vara full
Dra in hakan! / Släpp sargen! = lägg ned
Bolma = röka (Han stod o' bolma' som en jä 'lla skorsten!)
Kväsare = någon som e stöddig (uttalas: kveeesare)
Wow, Italian "Ciao!" and Austro-Bavarian "Servus!" have similar origins.
A lot of old Stockholm slang actually comes from romani people originally. But nowadays those words have become part of the common Swedish vocabulary.
@@spacefertilizer Tjej, kosing, tja etc etc
@@siegpasta interestingly enough, beng is also used as slang to say you are high (in the context of smoking marijuana or hash)
“Ha en räv bakom örat: “To have a fox behind the ear” = To be cunning. 🦊 “Kasta pärlor för svin = “To cast pearls to swines”. When you give away something meaningful which goes unappreciated.
I think 'cast pearls before swine' exist in English, but I'm not sure whether it has the same meaning.
The last one is a reference to a passage in the Bible.
Casting pearls before swine is a quote from the Bible.
At least 400 Demogorgons Might be but it’s a common expression in the Swedish language in Sweden in 2020. Which was the question of today. (Languages are not frozen in time :)
Similar idiom in the Bengali language to your second one: To dangle a pearl necklace from the neck of a Chimpanzee - Someone possessing something which he or she doesn't deserve
Inte illa pinkat (not badly peed) as English: not too shabby
Or the longer version: "Inte illa pinkad av en trähäst", not badly peed by a wooden horse :)
A lot of swear words in Swedish have a ”cleaner” counterpart. You may say ”dra åt skogen”/”go to the wood” instead of ”dra åt helvete”/”go to hell” or you may say ”järnspikar” (literally ”iron nails”) instead of ”jävlar” (lit. ”devils”). In the latter case, the beginnings of the words sound alike.
I prefer "Dra åt pipsvängen"
what about: Seventeen old men!
Sablar!
Interesting that the word for hell sounds like 'Helvetica' as in Switzerland.
@@jacobscrackers98 and you can sometimes see it above the finish line.
One of my favourites is a slang for McDonlads, restaurang gyllene måsen, resturant the golden seagull. As the McDonlads logos looks like a classical child drawing birds in the background.
I've never heard that. Everybody I know just calls it "Donken".
My favorite is by far "Kasta ett getöga" which literally means "Throw a goat eye". Which means, "Look at this"
No, it means "have a quick look" or "check it briefly, you don't have to put too much effort into it".
this one explains why Swedish ppl are full of metalheads lol
No no, "get" does not refer to 'goat' in this sentence. It is another deprecated old Norse word which I don't remember the meaning of at the moment but I think it has to do with cushion.
Not explicitly related, but in spanish the verb "echar" is used similarly. It literally means to throw/lob but in the context of "echar un vistazo" (lit. to throw a glance) it means to have a quick look at.
@@d00habib Think the original is gätöga with gät from gätare=old word for shepherd.
I really appreciate the glossing on these line by line comparisons so I can pick out which words are which
"Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död" = "The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead"
Used to describe a very stupid or mindless person. Also implies that someone's actions are done on autopilot without any thought.
also "ljuset är tänt men ingen hemma" - the light is on but no one's home
@@veronicag.805 That one's great too. I think there are a looooot of idioms describing the same exact meaning for this, but now that I'm string to think of more, I can't think of any. I guess my light is on buy noone's home, lol.
Wait, I can think of one. "Han har inte alla hästarna hemma" = "He does not have all his horses at home (in place)" allthough that one has a connotation of craziness also.
The hamster one just killed me man
The best one i've heard so far is "Han har gömt sig men det är ingen som räknar till 100".
Yet another way of saying that someone isn't the sharpest tool in the shed :)
It translates to "He's hiding, but there's no one counting to 100" referring to Hide and Seek :D
Jag anar ugglor i mossen.
I sense owls in the bog.
Meaning: this seems suspicious.
Dra mig baklänges!
Pull me backwards!
Meaning approx: What the...?!
Stefan Boström Madame Heinz This is actually an error in translation, where the old Norse word for wolves, “ulver”, was confused with “uver”, owls. So it actually should be “wolves in the bog” which makes more sense if you suspect danger. The misunderstanding has however stuck around throughout history.
oh yea we have the same thing in Norwegian "Ugler i mossen"
In Turkish there is "cami duvarına işemek" which literally means "to pee on the mosque wall"
It is when someone does an exceedingly stupid action on purpose
Wow! 😮
In Brussels there is a church (Eglise St.-Catherine) with an urinal attached to the exterior wall, because people were peeing against it anyway. 'Wildplassen' aka 'wild' peeing is seen as an act of liberty/manhood in Belgian culture, with Manneken Pis as the ultimate symbol.
In french we have "it's like peeing in a violin" (c'est comme pisser dans un violon) wich means doing something useless believing that it has some effect
In danish there is "gøre i nælderne" meaning taking a dump in the nettles, which is a horrible idea. I suspect that swedish has the same idiom since nettles also grow there.
@@ivanskyttejrgensen7464 In Swedish, that would literally be "att göra i nässlorna". Never heard anything similar in Swedish though... Någon som har bättre koll än mig kanske? 🙂
Thank you Langfocus for all the great videos! They have helped me a lot!
There is another fun expression which probably is very old considering its context:
"Jag har en gås oplockad med honom/henne/den personen"
which translates to:
"I have a goose unplucked with him/her/that person".
No one really uses it anymore but it means that you have unfinished business with a person (the person you're supposedly gonna pluck a goose with). Hilarious.
Keep up the great work!
Ha're, also Ha de', as in, Ha det (Have it) which is shortened from Ha det gott (Have it good), or gött as we tend to say around Gothenburg.
A common way to say bye similarly to Have a nice day.
I think we have gotten that from Norwegian who uses that as their standard way of saying Goodbye.
I've noticed that we in the west part of Sweden have a few words that are similar in Norwegian, and that someone from Stockholm wouldn't use.
Congrats on 1 million subscribers by the way, Paul!
"Jag möblerar om plytet på dig", lit: "I'll rearange the face on you". With plytet being an older word for face. Möblerar as in rearanging furniture.
"Dra på trissor!", lit: "Pull on pulleys (I believe). Example: "Dra på trissor, I won the lottery!"
"Dygna" is a nice verb. It means that you didn't go to sleep and stayed up all night until the next day. I can't do that anymore, haha.
I see no honourable mention to the göteborska (gothenburgian) "Är du go, eller?", meaning something like "are you good in the head?" (read: "Are you dumb?"). Usually follows after someone says or does something weird or dumb. It is so defining of the göteborg (gothenburg) dialect that people who make fun of said dialect, or if göteborg is in any way mentioned, usually just say this phrase over and over to each other.
Also, a "plätt" isn't really a pancake. It's more like a miniature pancake, which makes it easier to make than regular pancakes. That's why it's "easy as a plätt".
i norrland och på åland så är plätt = pannkaka & pannkaka = ugnspannkaka
Att vara "go" kan ju också vara bra, "Du é la fö go!". Also has a second meaning that's good, "You're too good!".
Gothenburg is actually a treasure-trove of wonderful slang. Bring it on!
I think the Finnish version of "You've made your bed, now lie in it." Is pretty neat due to our grammar and is having a distinct verb for making ones bed.
"Niin makaat kuin petaat."
"(So) (you lie) (as) (you make a bed)"
As a swede I especially liked the explanations how some slangs came to be =)
One idiom, probably already written in this comment section by now, is "I anticipates (have a feeling there's) owls in the bog". It depends on context but can be simplified as an anticipation something bad happened, going on or will happen. After a quick research before posting this I read it has Danish origin!
Some common expressions:
Tala är silver, tiga är guld.
'Speaking is silver, being silent is gold'
Ensam är stark
'One is strong alone'
Ju fler kockar desto sämre soppa
'the more chefs there are, the worse the soup becomes'
Själv är bäste dräng
'the best farmhand is (works) by himself'
English versions of two of those:
"Speech is silver, silence is golden"
"Too many cooks spoil the broth"
And I would translate the others:
"Alone is strong"
"The best farmhand is oneself"
@@Hwyadylaw Interesting, these proverbs so often seem to be European, rather than expressing a more local culture.
Jättebra video brorsan! Jag älskar Sverige och dess språk.
2:22 The word is 'bra' is slowly disappearing and being replaced in many contexts by 'god'. This is happening to many Swedish words in favour of alternatives which sound more like English equivalents. A few examples: 'tillfällig' is being replaced by 'temporär', 'snabb' > 'kvick', 'regelbunden' > 'regulär', 'laglig' > 'legal', 'rimlig', > 'resonabel' 'upprepa > 'repetera', 'sammanhang' > 'kontext', 'dödlig' > 'fatal' etc., etc. Many of these changes, of course, are to words which were already part of the Swedish vocabulary. but the ones which resemble English words are taking over and taking over quickly. Some of them were "false friends" when I was learning Swedish. An example: I was told that there was a word 'konfirmera' in Swedish but it was only used in special contexts. Now you hear (and read) Swedes using it instead of 'bekräfta'. 'Ordinär' is another Swedish word which is going from special usage to general usage and taking over from 'vardaglig'/'vanlig'. Just yesterday I heard a Swedish football commentator say that a team must have 'praktiserat' that free kick on their training ground. I don't think the trend is so surprising. American cultural domination and the internet are probably the root causes. What I do find surprising is the speed at which the change is taking place. You hear middle-aged and even old people phoning into radio programmes, for example, and using words like 'publik/publiken' instead of "allmän'/'allmänheten', 'separat' for 'skild', 'vinst' för 'seger', 'simpel' för 'enkel' etc. You know that these older people have probably changed their choice of words fairly recently so that it's not just the younger generation making the change. And won't it be interesting for linguists and lexicographers to follow the fate of expressions like 'segerns sötma' and 'segersvit' etc. once 'vinst' has ousted 'seger' to describe a winning performance. They'll almost certainly stay the same while the other word takes over in everyday Swedish.
As a native Swede, I find this comment a bit exaggerating. Although there has been an increase in anglicisms or use of Swedish words that resemble their English counterparts in some linguistic domains, like specialised fields such as sports, finance or ads, it is difficult to get a sense if speakers have actually altered their vocabularies in to be more English-like, and if so to what degree. Media is generally trend sensitive and a lot more prone to use what is considered trendy also when it comes to language, whereas proper language change with one word taking over at the cost of another takes a lot longer since it needs to reach a big group of speakers in order to become established. This is a process which is not linear, but can go back and forth. It is difficult If not impossible to decide in the present which perceived changes are permanent changes, and which are just temporary. Trends come and go, and if a trendy term doesn't reach a larger group of speakers it is not likely that it will become permanent, even if it might seem like it will. I very rarely hear people using 'god' instead of 'bra', 'kvick' instead of 'snabb', 'repetera' instead of 'upprepa' or 'fatal' instead of 'dödlig'. To me they feel rather old fashioned to be honest, and I haven't taken notice of any increased use of them neither among my friends nor in society at large. Anecdotal evidence, but like I said it's hard to analyse language change right when it's happening, and we do also take notce of diffent notice of different aspects of it. And no matter what changes may come, we can be sure thar language will always change no matter what we do or think about it :)
While Swedish language is becoming more anglified I don't recognize myself in any of the examples you mentioned, and I agree with above comment that a lot of them sound actually really old fashioned. While "konfirmera" is very seldom used as in place of bekräfta, I can imagine Swedes say "confirm-a", using the english pronunciation and all but adding the "-ah" at the end as to swedify it, this I hear all the time such as join-a, merge-a, game-a etc
Many of the stuff you mentioned seems wrong to me as a native Swede, or at least like a non issue.
"Bra" being replaced by "god"? what? No. Tell me the context in this case, because i cant see how you can mix these words up.
"Allmänheten" is very far from the meaning of "publiken". "Allmänheten" means "the public". You use it to talk about most of the people in Sweden for example. The word "publiken" means "The crowd" or "The onlookers" (or similar) and is mostly used for describing people at a music concert or similar smaller event type things.
You could say something like "Det är inte i allmänhetens intresse" which basically means "Its not in the best interest of the people" or "Its not in the best interest of the public". You would not really use the word "publiken" in this way, but you could say "Publiken vill se något roligt", which means "The crowd wants to see something funny".
I cant see how they are even comparable words since they have totally different meanings. Perhaps they had different meanings a long time ago, but i have never in 30 years heard it used differently.
"Temporär" is not replacing "tillfällig", it's just that they are synonyms. You have words like "Övergående" and "provisorisk" that are very similar as well. Lets say you wanted to say you are only living temporary in an apartment, you can say all of these:
"Jag bor bara här tillfälligt"
"Jag bor bara här temporärt"
"Jag bor bara här provisoriskt"
"Detta är ett övergående boendearrangemang" alternatively something like "Jag bor bara här under en övergångsperiod" .
Snabb/Kvick: Synonyms, but they have slightly different connotations. You also have words like "rapp" and "hastig" which can be used in similar ways. "kvick" can also mean "Witty", "Funny". If someone is running very fast you would 99% of the time say they are "snabb", not "Kvick". On the other hand, if you are referencing that someone thought of something fast, in response to a question perhaps, you would almost always use the word "Kvick" instead of "Snabb".
As a native Swede, nobody says temporär, kvick, regulär, legal, resonabel, repetera, kontext or fatal where I live. Hell, i didn't even know that 'fatal', 'regulär' and 'legal' were considered words in Swedish. And also 'kvick' is extremely old fashioned.
@@DwarfenBlizzard Swedish is by all means a living, dynamic and healthy language. If you look through the recent history (150 years) you will find that many words have come and gone. The swedish academy of language don't say that what they put in their text books are what the language *is*. Their job is only to describe it as good as they can at a given point in time. If enough people use a word it will be a part of the swedish language.
I got a bit of a shock when I moved to Norway. Here it's not really like that. They even got what is called a language police. You can't name your kid after swedish principles. First name, middle name and surname. If it doesn't match up with "normal" norwegian dubble names it's a no go. And no..It wasn't anything "funky".
A bit of an odd story is a village that was founded in the 1600's. It had to change name. The name was deemed more 'Danish' than Norwegian. No-one have ever called it anything else and it was founded during danish rule of Norway. But there you go...
One thing to note, sweidsh speakers rarely pronounce the J in 'ja' in informal speech, it becomes almost always 'ah'', people write it in texts like 'aa'
And up North they tend to just inhale with their pouting mouths formed like a really tight O.
Never encountered it.
Some feedback, and also some expressions:
The concept of "vaska" in Stureplan actually doesn't have anything to do with the formal verb "vaska" (panning). Instead, it is a verb made from the word "vask", which means kitchen sink. "Kitchen sinking" (vaska), then, means to just pour things out into the sink; to intentionally discard something valuable because you can.
Secondly, "skitit i det blå skåpet": "skåp" means cabinet, not cabin.
Lastly, I'd like to quote my former boss who basically spoke in idioms. During a meeting, he actually said this, I remember it clear as day, even though it was over ten years ago:
"Nu måste vi trolla med knäna och komma in i matchen så vi kan göra det här ända in i kaklet. Annars får vi en påse skridskor."
Literal translation:
"Now we have to make magic with our knees and get into this ballgame so we can do this all the way into the tiles. Otherwise, we'll have a bag of skates."
Idioms used:
"Make magic with your knees", same expression as "bend over backwards" in English; that something requires incredible effort.
"Get into the ballgame". Quite self-explanatory. You're losing the game - get your game together and turn it around.
"All the way into the tiles": to completely do something, opposite of half-assed. What this has to do with tiles (as in wall tiles), I have no idea.
"Bag of skates": for some reason, this means something bad or undesirable. As far as I've been able to read up on the expression, it originally was a funny adaptation of "not my cup of tea" in English (not my bag of skates), i.e., "not my thing". It can be used in both meanings today.
Jag tror att "ända in i kalket" är en gammal simterm som refererar att man inte ska sluta simma för ens sista simtaget (där då handen möter den kaklade bassängväggen).
@@er6946 "för ens" skall vara förrän. Från ordet "förr" som i detta fallet betyder tidigare. Precis som i uttrycket "ju förr desto bättre"
Förrän = förr än, fast sammansatt.
God that's funny! Imma start doing that.
One of my favourite swedish idioms is: "Många bäckar små..." which is a shorter version of "Många bäckar små bildar en å" which means "many small creeks creates a river", or something like that. There is an english equivalent but it seems to be really old because none of my english friends knows about it: "Many a little makes a mickle".
It basically means that many small things can become something bigger. It's usually used in a cautionary manner.
Well ... it's not really English, per se. Meickle is a Scots word and means "much" or "a lot". You can find it used in the poetry of Robert Burns (My Tocher's the Jewel). It's pronounced 'mickle', despite the spelling.
@@patrickwilliams3108 That makes sense! Thanks for clarifying :)
@@Kathkere I'm also very fond of that one, although I don't agree that it's usually in a cautionary manner. I find it's often used in regards to making small progress, but which over time grows into something great. Like saving money.
Just want to say you covered this very well even better than i expected and i respect that you took time to learn about this topic keep up the good work
Hey man, I recently noticed how much your Channel has grown, I still remember when you where starting and you were studying Tagalog. I'm happy for you success. Swedish is a very interesting language, I studied it for some months and the biggest problem I had was that even if direct translation from English was extremely useful, all the slang and idioms were things I had to actually study. Translation only takes you so far even if Swedish is easy to learn.
I'm also starting with my polyglot channel, I hope I can provide as much value as you have been able to provide with yours. See you around!
This channel hasn’t grown since 2016 (about a year after I started). It just has more subscribers (which doesn’t mean anything). The number of views is the same, and the amount of money is the same. It’s not nearly as successful as people think when they look at the number of subscribers.
@@Langfocus Yea I forgot about the average amount of views per video (still not bad, all above 100k). And yea subs don't really mean anything -.-'. Still for a language focused channel, it is not bad. It seems like the only people who get big with languages on YT are people who sing, surprise strangers with their languages skills, do clickbaity language challenges and so on. I think that in my channel I will mix language learning with self-development, we'll see how that goes. Think that at least now you are well known, maybe you can leverage that fame in other ways, like having sponsors, Patreon, etc. Wish you the best my friend :)
Leva loppan. literally: living the flea. or living the life of a flea. it means to have some sense of luxury or atleast easy. Nu lever vi loppan. now we are living like a flea. this might be said if you are relaxing having cold ones with your pals, eating snacks and having a good time. but also it is a sign of luxury
"living the life of a flea" in English it just sounds like you're broke.
It's hilarious to see these expressions being so rigorously analysed, but I was very impressed. I was constantly expecting you to get something wrong, because the nuances of slang can be hard to agree upon even among native speakers themselves. Watching this makes me trust that your content on languages I do *not* understand is equally trustworthy :)
Another slang, originally form another language, is "nema problema" - you'll hear Swedes saying it all the time, originally from Serbo-Croatian, with the same meaning - "there's no problem" or "it's alright".
"Ropa inte hej förrän du är över bäcken" - Don't say hello until you're over the stream - meaning: Don't take anything out in advance.
"Måla fan på väggen" - Paint the devil on the wall - meaning: Making something out to be much worse than it has to be.
"Gå över ån för vatten" - Cross the stream to get water - meaning: Making something more tedious than it has to be.
"Mota Olle i grind" - Fend Olle off at the fence - meaning: Solving an issue before it becomes a problem.
"Kasta ett getöga" - Throw a goats eye - meaning: To look closely at something.
"Inte för allt smör i Småland" - Not for all the butter in Småland - meaning: Something you really don't want.
"Hellre en fågel i handen än tio i skogen" - Rather a bird in your hand than ten in the forest - meaning: Be happy for what you've got.
"Kasta inte sten i glashus" - Don't throw rocks in a glass house - meaning: Don't throw accusations where you're not in the right.
"Mota Olle i grind" - "Olle" is an old word for bull and not a name. A correct translation is "to meet the bull at the gate". Literally, to stop the bull from leaving the enclosure.
"Kasta inte sten i glashus" does not mean what you wrote, it means to not shame others of things you do yourself. I.e. Do not be a hypocrite.
@@FERGUSOra And "Kasta ett getöga" really means to look quickly at something or to glance at something.
@@FERGUSOra I didn't know that, thanks! It definitely makes more sense then ^^
"Kasta inte sten i glashus" there are some weird variations of it
"kasta inte vatten i badhus" don't throw water in a bathhouse or don't pee in a bathhouse
6:15 in Polish "Jak sobie pościelisz tak się wyśpisz" (how you make your bed, that quality sleep you will have)
7:03 in Poland we buy cats, not pigs in our unknown sacks 😆
In Germany too :)
Maybe it was sold as a pig.
Danes also buys cats in sacks
The full story in Sweden is that the pig in the sack ends up being a cat.
So excited that you made another Swedish video! There needs to be much more content on this beautiful language! 🥰
It's not the fart that kills, it's the smäll.
Swedish: Det är inte farten som dödar, det är smällen
English: It's not the speed that kills, it's the collision/the "bang"
Bad translation: It's not the fart that kills, it's the smell.
Made famous by the Norwegian rally star Petter Solberg. Also famous for:
Petter: “The rat was loose”
English: “the steering wheel was loose”
Norwegian: «Rattet var løst»
Petter: “In Norway we rape after dinner”
English: “in Norway we burp after dinner”
Norwegian: «I Norge raper vi etter maten»
Petter: “I have bad pigs in my dekk”
English: “I have bad studs in my tires”
Norwegian: «Jeg har dårlige pigger i dekkene mine»
Petter: “I came with a great fart and dishappered as a prick upon the sky”
English: “I came with great speed and disappeared like a dot in the sky”
Norwegian: «Jeg kom med stor hastighet og forsvant som en prikk på himmelen»
@@linnea8753 It's a bit like our current State Epidemiologist. You don't need to take precautions until you're already sick, basically. A bit like: "It has not been established that seat belts save lives other than when people smash their cars".
@@danhanqvist4237 Or "guns don't kill, people do"
@@AudunWangen "Stop the bus please, I must spy!"
I just learned "Du har satt din sista potatis." Don't know why that makes me laugh, but I've been using it all week, now!
Russian has also adopted кайф (kayf), apparently from Arabic, and it is now used widely among younger people, though here it means what it should - something really good and pleasing
Afghani influence, for sure. It's not that common now.
stlurz can’t be that sure
The version with it coming through Chechnya, Dagestan and other southern republics sounds way more likely to me
Also it still is heard every day
I have a different theory for "vaska". A kitchen sink in swedish is called a "vask", and you denominalize the noun vask to the verb vaska, meaning that you pour the drink into the kitchen sink.
In Scania (Skåne) that verb actually has the same meaning as "to wash". Jag ska bara vaska av mig = I'm just going to wash myself.
In Korean, we use a noun phrase "the fortune of a cold rice"(찬 밥 신세, chan bab sinse) to express someone ignored or not welcomed nor well treated.
This was a great video Paul! Did really not expect you to make a video on swedish slang! 😂
"Skåp" is a "cabinet in which you store stuff", not a cabin.
Thank you for making these videos, I've been looking forward to see my language here! Those expressions are fun. Just wanted to point out that some of the slang words are probably quite Stockholm centered. I've barely heard anyone say 'obra', but 'fet' is definitely in use everywhere. My contribution:
Att få blodad tand - to get blooded tooth - To want more of something you just tried, often used with activities - "jag testade snowboard nu i helgen för första gången och har fått blodad tand. Jag har redan bokat nästa resa!"
"Now you've planted your last potato. You're gonna get paid for old cheese. You're gonna get your fishes warm. It's gonna get hot around your ears."
man , I love the topics you chose for the examples!
Congrats for the 1 million subs :)
that was months ago
@@J11_boohoo Was it ? I didn't notice/pay attention, and I just saw the 1.04 M “¯\_(ツ)_/¯“
"Good day axe handle" (god dag yxskaft) is a classic one. I believe its from a story and refers to something like giving an answer thats not related to the question.
One of my favorites is "Smaken är som baken" which means the taste is like the butt. Means that all opinions will always be split, like the butt
I live in Sweden for more than a decade, I speak Swedish, Turkish, Arabic, English, and Farsi (Persian) as mother-tongue and am originally from Afghanistan. Aina might come from the Turkish to Swedish but I guaranty you that Aina (Mirror) is a Persian word. Of course, at least 10% of Turkish language is Persian or has Persian roots and a big percentage Arabic, Ottoman Turkish had even more Farsi and Arabic words. Nowadays a lot of words/slangs from middle eastern languages have entered Sweden due to immigration of middle eastern people to Sweden and especially Swedish teens use them. Another word that is used between Swedish teens/youth is Jalla (pronounced Yalla) which is an Arabic word that means come on or hurry up
A man from northern sweden goes to Stockholm, but on his way out of the trainstation he runs into a problem. As he reaches the doors, there are only entrances and no exits...
" 'In' and 'out', aren't those the same things?"
5:05 the whole idiom is "ingen fara på taket såläng skorstenen står" "no danger on the roof as long as the chimney stands" I have NO idea why but That is the whole idiom.
*skorstenen...
@@Daffob1nt tack, jag har ingen aning om hur det gick till.
@@eventyraren Ingen fara, Tryckfelsnisse slog till igen, helt enkelt - sånt händer oss alla. As the saying goes, pobody is nerfect! :-D
As a person from Gothenburg, I love the word 'gött'! It means nice or good.
Jag anar ugglor i mossen - I suspect owls in the bog
When you feel that something is not quite as it seems
I'm from northern Sweden, and something I really appreciate about a lot of northern dialects is that we have an equivalent of the English "put": "he", pronounced [heː]. In standard Swedish, rather than to "put" an object somewhere, you would specify *how* you put it there, i.e. laying, sitting, standing, etc.
Agreed. When I went to university we had a northerner teaching computer assembly language. He very enthusiastically explained that the "put" instruction is like "he" in Swedish. Most of my classmates were southerners and didn't have a clue what he was talking about! 😂
I'm not sure I understood you correctly. Could you give me a sentence or two where you use "he".
@@emmamemma4162 "Du kan he glaset på bänken."
"Jaha, jag hedde det i diskmaskinen."
"Okej, har du hett det där behöver du inte ta ut det."
@@emmamemma4162 Though you also have the potential for confusion in cases where "he" is also a dialectal variant of "det", and stuff like the northern tendency to shorten words or contract them together, such as in the case of "he den", which becomes "he'n", as well as the use of words like "hänna" to mean "här". "He ä som he ä, ja sku ändå ha hett'n hänna."
@@wwklnd I see, very cool. Is it a little bit like "hon hade mjölk över hela bordet" meaning "she spilled milk all over the table", only that you use it for intended actions as well?
My dialect (Central Ostrobothnia) also uses "he" for "it"/"det" (neuter nouns) and "ha" (masculine) or "ho" (feminine) for common nouns ("den").
The last sentence would be "He ir som he ir, ja sku äntå ha lagd a (or "e", if it's a female noun) eje" in my dialect.
I reacted to the word "baxa" which you described as stealing. I've never heard this before. Now some slang can be local and depend on what age you are in, but I see that it can apparently also mean stealing. The most common meaning (at least in Gothenburg and for a 55 year old like me) is to move with a more common meaning to move something that is heavier so you have to pry.
There we then suddenly have a loss because you traditionally have to pry to break in somewhere. Stretch and Swedish "baxa" then have the same meaning.
I still think that "baxa" mainly means to move something.
Here in Östergötland it means both. "baxa upp den, bara" - "Just manhandle it up there" and "baxa och kränga" - "steal and sell". For the non-swedish speakers, "kränga" literally means "wobble" or "sway" as in what a ship does in hard seas.
"No danger on the roof" was used during World War II. Soldiers were tasked with inspecting attics in apartment buildings in Stockholm. They would check if there was a lot of stuff and garbage stored there, something that was illegal during the world war period. If there was lots of stuff, and rubbish in the attic it was a fire hazard and in order to prevent any fire from jumping from one building to the next it needed to be cleared. If it was cleared at the time of inspection the soldier who was on the roof would yell down to the garbage collection crew waiting in the street, "Ingen fara på taket!". The garbage crew could then move on and place the truck and stop traffic at the next address. The soldier on the roof also moved on and slowly but surly the army made sure that no fire hazard was left in any apartment complex or building in Stockholm. No danger on the roof, no risk of fires or firestorms in case of a firebombing or sabotage etc.
Ah! Har alltid undrat var det talesättet kommer ifrån.
Sorry this is not true. The expression older than World War II, there's even a film called "ingen fara på taket" from 1938. It has no specific origin. Original expression was "No danger on the roof as long as the chimney stands."
My favourite expression in Sweden is "Guld och gröna skogar" (Gold and green forests). It is used to refer to a promise that sounds too good to be true. For example:
"There were people from finland that got fooled into concentration camps by the earlier communitic sovjet union. They were very poor at the time and were promised gold and green forests but ended up becoming slaves for the sovjet union". In this sentence, "gold and green forest" refers to a better life for them, where all their worries and problems are solved and gone, which obviously sounds too good to be true, as in, how likely is it that somebody suddenly just show up and solves all your problems for you?
We often use this expression when we talk about how people got scammed, or when we talk about an area, workplace or lifestyle where reputation is highly overexaggorated.
That's why I learned Swedish, it is such a weird and awesome language!
A slang and idioms series sounds like a good new video series. :-)
"Vaska" does not refer to gold mining! The noun "vask" is a sink. Hence "vaska" i.e to sink means to pour down the sink.
The idom to shit in the blue closet refers to that swedish people used to have their porcelin and other chinese wares in a blue closet. So it means that you have taken a shit on some pretty expensive things.
Quite right. And the noun "vask" comes from the verb "vaska" wich means to rinse something of. "Jag skall gå och vaska av mina händer" = "I will go and wash my hands" is a good example in these days ;)
Vaska champagnen = Sink the champagne (pour it the sink)...
Vaska guld = wash or clean/separate the gold from gravel.
Vaska in Scandinavian = Wash.
They're all related but the meaning as shifted,
lnteresting clip. True, Swedish is a very rich language, full of interesting expressions. l speak it fluently.
Not slang, but a very common word in Swedish would be "tjej", coming from Romani.
It means girl, young girl or girlfriend. ^^
Yes, the Romani influence in Swedish is quite interesting
It was pure slang until recently (say the late 1970s). Originally, it meant "bad girl".
@@jaojao1768 We have had Romani people in Sweden and Finland for almost half a millennium. It is not so interesting really (or strange) since Romani is considered to be i minority language in Sweden.
You know im a swedish native but us having the word for "little girl" and "girlfriend" being the same really isn't a good idea now that i think about it. There is also no grammatical difference so its all up to context. That could get akward for non-fluent speakers
@@johnnorthtribe It took "us" more than 500 years though, to give Romani a politically correct status of "minority language". Before that Sweden pretty much ignored all variants of gypsy languages, or sometimes even tried to eradicate them, just like most nation states have done with small minority languages through history.
Pewds is awful lol. I'll take this channel over that forever
You should do this for whatever languages you can, this was fun
true
Here's a pretty dark but very commonly used (even more so than the formal word) from the North.
"Kattstrypare" meaning Zip Tie in English, or Buntband in formal Swedish. Kattstrypare:s literal translation is "Cat Strangler" in English.
A swedish slang is (jag åker bulle för degen) witch mean I ride taxi for money. If it are literally it mean I ride bun for dough
Never heard that expression and it gets 0 google hits. Rather it's a combination of 2 separate slang terms, "åka bulle" for take a cab and "deg" (dough) for money.
@@backelie both are examples of Stockholm slang, so that may be the reason. Calling a taxi "bulle" is unheard of in most of the rest of Sweden, while money = "deg" might have spread a bit more.
I’ve only heard the example “har du deg till en bulle?” - “do you have money for a cab?”
We got something about cows on ice in German, too: 'die Kuh vom Eis holen' - "to get the cow off the ice", meaning to resolve a difficult or dangerous situation
Finally the pewdiepie langfocus collab we’ve been waiting for!
That's a nice format, I hope you'll make more similar videos with other languages!