Do you want to learn Swedish but you're wondering: is Swedish hard to learn?
Maybe you've heard about å, ä and ö or the lack of rules. But is Swedish really that hard to learn? As a general rule, for English speakers it's not the hardest language out there. But there are some aspects of Swedish that can trip you up.
Do you still have questions about the difficulty of learning Swedish? Fret not! Because by the end of this article, you will know the most challenging things about learning Swedish as well as the easiest!
Pro Tip
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Is Swedish Hard To Learn?
The answer to that is both yes and no. First and foremost, it’s important to note that there are no easy or hard languages.
All languages are difficult to learn to some degree, and in some cases, it’s easier to learn a new language if your mother tongue is similar to the language you want to know.
On the other hand, it can be more challenging to learn Swedish if your native language is very different, for example, if it uses an entirely different alphabet.
But! If you're an English speaker, then you might have an advantage. Often times it’s easier for English speakers to learn Swedish than most.
This is because English and Swedish both are part of the Germanic language tree and are close linguistically wise.
Swedish also uses the Latin alphabet, except for å, ä and ö, which makes it easier for English-speaking learners to read and phonetically understand Swedish.
A few things in the Swedish language make people think Swedish is hard to learn:
- There are gendered nouns
- The pronunciation
- It’s a V2-language
1. Gendered Nouns & Rules In Swedish
In Swedish, the genders are called “common” and “neuter”. Understanding the concept of grammatical genders might be hard for an English-speaking learner. And unfortunately, there are no easy rules for learning Swedish grammatical genders.
The rules are arbitrary and have to be memorised. But if you ever face a situation where you don't know which gender to use, use the common gender! That is by far the most used gender in Swedish.
A good rule of thumb is, however, that the common gender is used for things that are alive, while the neuter gender is used for items that aren't alive.
That system isn't foolproof, though, and there are many exceptions. Unfortunately, you'll simply have to learn them. The StoryLearning method will help you with this as reading short stories in Swedish will expose you to the genders of the most common nouns.
The difference between the common and neuter gender is that the common gender uses the indefinite article en and the definite suffix -en, while the neuter gender uses the indefinite article ett and the definite suffix -et.
For example, ett hus (a house), huset (the house), en hund (a dog), hunden (the dog).
2. Swedish Pronunciation Might Be The Hardest Thing To Learn
The thing most learners need help with when learning Swedish is usually Swedish pronunciation. Swedish has some vowel sounds that don't exist in English, like å, ä and ö.
But don't let this discourage you! The pronunciation of those vowel sounds is relatively straightforward and pronounced the same, regardless of the word they're in.
Å sounds similar to “O” in the English word “or”. Ä is almost identical to “ai” in “air, pair and hair”, and ö sounds like “ea” in “heard”. Learning these sounds means you've already come a long way with your Swedish pronunciation!
Soft vs Hard Vowels
What might be more tricky, though, is learning which vowels are soft and which ones are hard. This is probably not the most challenging part for an English speaker because soft/hard vowels are common in English and multiple European languages.
But for others, this concept might be foreign. In Swedish, the five vowels: E, I, Y, Ä, and Ö are soft, while the following four are hard: A, O, U, Å.
The vowels indicate how to pronounce the consonant that comes before them in the word. Not all consonants are affected by this; the most common ones are k and g.
For example, the word katalog (catalogue) is pronounced with a hard k because the following letter is an a. The hard k in Swedish is pronounced more or less the same as in English.
Körkort (driving licence) is pronounced with a soft k because of the letter ö. A similar sound in English would be the “sh” sound in “shine”.
Gäst (guest) is pronounced with a soft g, similar to the y sound from “yet” in English. Gardin (curtain) is pronounced with a hard g, similar to hard g in English. But with every rule comes exceptions!
There are a few words that don't follow this rule. They are few, but they exist. You'll have to learn the exceptions because there's no other way to tell which words are excepted.
Two examples are gem (paperclip) and kebab, which both are pronounced with hard vowels, hard g and hard k, respectively.
3. A V2-Language
Another thing that may make Swedish hard to learn is that Swedish is a V2 language. That means that the verb comes in the second place in the sentence.
This might not be particularly difficult for English speakers, but it's a common mistake native learners of a foreign language (that uses a different word order) make.
However, English uses SVO-word order, which means that the verb is only sometimes in second place in an English sentence.
One example when the verb is not in the second place is the sentence: “I'm not going to do that.”
That word order is correct in English, but in Swedish the verb must always come in second place, regardless of which word is in first place.
Jag kommer inte att göra det is the correct translation of the example above, but if that sentence is directly translated to English, it would be: “I'm going not to do that.”
Learning that the verb should always be placed second in a sentence comes a long way when wanting to sound fluent in Swedish.
Is Swedish Hard To Learn? 2 Aspects That Make It Easy!
To be completely frank, it's always hard to learn a new language, and it requires dedication and commitment. But Swedish is not impossible to learn, and a few factors will make learning Swedish easier for you if you are an English speaker.
- Swedish has lots of cognates and loanwords (cognates are words that sound and spell similarly in multiple languages and share the same meaning)
- Rules for article and noun use are similar between Swedish and English.
You Already Know A Lot Of Swedish Words
Swedish shares plenty of words with English, both because the languages have a similar origin and have influenced each other but also because Swedish has many English loan words.
Both English and Swedish have many similar words that originate from Latin, making it easier to understand some of the other language's words. If you're interested in the origins and evolution of Swedish, check out my post on Swedish language history.
Examples of cognates are words like:
- profile – profil
- absolute – absolut
- family – familj
- präst – priest
- school – skola
Be aware that there are false friends in Swedish, though! They're words that sound similar to English but have entirely different meanings. Examples?
Here are a few!
- Aktuell means “current/present”, not “actual”
- Delikat means “delicious”, not “delicate”
- Fabrik means “factory”, not “fabric”
- Necessär means “washbag”, not “necessary”
- Semester means “vacation/holiday”, not “term”
English loanwords in Swedish have also increased, not least in the last 50-60 years. The loanwords usually get a new spelling, but it's still possible to discern the original word.
Here are a few examples!
- date – dejt
- mobile – mobil
- mail – mejl
- bookmark – bokmärke
- hamburger – hamburgare
- interview – intervju
And many, many more!
A Couple Of Rules Are Similar In Both Swedish And English!
The most striking one is the word order. Technically speaking, both Swedish and English use SVO-word order. Because of that, in many sentences, it's possible to directly translate the sentence from English to Swedish.
For example:
- Jag såg Tim – I saw Tim
- Jag körde bilen – I drove the car
This is generally only possible with simple and short sentences. Swedish is a V2 language, so the verb must always come in second place, even if the word that comes before it isn't a subject.
If the English sentence has the verb somewhere else, directly translating the sentence would not be possible.
The other handy rule is that both languages conjugate verbs in a really similar way. Let's look at an example below:
- (to) study – (att) studera
- studied – studerade
- (have/has) studied – (har) studerat
- had studied – hade studerat
- will study – kommer att studera
- will have had studied – kommer att ha tittat
The main difference is that Swedish doesn't have the continuous, “ing” form. This might be a shock for an English speaker, but once you've learned to conjugate the verbs, you won't even realise it's missing!
So, Is Swedish Hard To Learn?
To summarise, Swedish is not more complicated than what you make it to be. And know this! You don't have to speak Swedish at a really advanced level to still be able to learn and use it.
Swedish has a couple of factors that make it hard, like pronunciation and the lack of gender rules. But some things make Swedish easier to learn: English speakers recognise many words, and occasionally the word order is similar.
The most important thing when learning a new language is practice. And as long as you dare to try a new language, I’m certain you will be able to learn Swedish too!
By the way, if you've answered the question why learn Swedish?, then you'll have the motivation to get started and keep going.
