Words are not just labels we stick on things. They are little parcels of culture. Sometimes a single word is enough to tell you something about how people live, what they value, and what they do on a perfectly ordinary Thursday at three o’clock. Some words are fairly easy to translate. Bord becomes table, hund becomes dog, and kaffe becomes, mercifully, coffee.

Some Swedish words are so short they almost look like sounds. Nja. Tja. Jaha. They may seem unimportant, almost too small to bother explaining. But in everyday Swedish, they do a lot. They can show hesitation, lack of enthusiasm, surprise, acceptance, scepticism, or simply change the whole tone of a conversation. The tricky thing is that they do not just mean one thing. Their meaning often depends on tone of voice, facial expression and situation. The same word can soun

Some Swedish verbs are more than just verbs. They are little everyday tools. They help us talk about energy, time and small mistakes without having to give a long lecture about our entire life. Three such verbs are orka, hinna and råka. They may look simple. But they work hard. Jag orkar inte. (“I don’t have the energy.” / “I can’t be bothered.”) Jag hinner inte. (“I don’t have time.”) Jag råkade. (“I accidentally…” / “I happened to…”) Three short sentences. Three compl

Swedish has a fondness for small, practical words. Not always dramatic words with sweeping gestures and wind in their hair, but everyday words that stand in the hallway holding a spare toothbrush, trying to explain who actually lives where. This is especially clear when it comes to homes and relationships. Because relationships are not only about romance, family and big feelings. They are also about toothbrushes in the bathroom cabinet, whose cheese is in the fridge, who has

In Sweden, a request can arrive dressed up as a question. It does not march in and say, "Do this!" It pads into the room in socks and says: Kan du öppna fönstret? (Can you open the window?) Grammatically, it is a question. But in many situations, it does not mean, "Are you physically capable of opening the window?" It means something closer to: Öppna fönstret, tack. (Open the window, please.) Only softer.

Swedish is full of words that sound English. Sometimes they really are fairly ordinary English words that have simply been given Swedish spelling or Swedish grammar, such as chatta, sajt and fejka. But sometimes it gets even more entertaining. Sometimes Swedish uses words that look English, sound English and perhaps even feel English, but do not quite work that way in English. They have English-looking parts, but a Swedish meaning. They stroll around sounding internatio

Swedish has always borrowed words from other languages: German, French, Latin, Greek and, these days, very often English. Sometimes words enter Swedish looking rather formal, like implementera (“implement”), digitalisering (“digitalisation”) and strategi (“strategy”). Other times, they stroll straight into everyday life in trainers and say: mejla, dejta and streama. The interesting thing is not just that these words come from English. The interesting thing is what happens n

Feelings can be powerful things. They can rush in, whisper quietly, or settle over the whole day like a blanket. But in Swedish, they often come with something very small: a preposition. Man är kär i någon. (You are in love with someone.) Man är rädd för något. (You are afraid of something.) Man är trött på något. (You are tired of / fed up with something.) Small words, big feelings. Prepositions show where the feeling is directed. Is it warm? Irritated? Worried?

Some Swedish words are fairly easy to translate. And then there are words like lagom. It is often translated as “just right”, “not too much, not too little”, “in moderation” or “the right amount”. All of those are roughly correct. But none of them quite captures the full feeling. Because lagom is not just an amount. Sometimes it is a temperature, a tone, a way of dressing, a way of speaking, a way of taking up space in a room without knocking over the lamp. In short: lagom

Clothing words ought to be fairly straightforward. A jumper is a jumper. A pair of shoes is a pair of shoes. A hat is a hat. But as soon as you start comparing Swedish and English, certain clothing words begin to behave suspiciously. Take smoking. In Swedish, smoking means an elegant formal outfit. You picture smart dinners, a bow tie and a black jacket. But in English, smoking means rökning. So if you say “He wore a smoking”, it does not sound as if he was elegantly dresse

Some Swedish words are so small they almost slip past unnoticed. They sit quietly in the middle of a sentence, often unstressed, rarely explained, and almost impossible to translate neatly. And yet they can change everything. Three of these words are väl, nog and ju.

In Swedish, small verbs can do big things. Two of the most useful, and sometimes most confusing, are vara and bli. They may look harmless enough, but they have very different jobs. Think of it like this: Vara is about a state or situation. Bli is about a change. Jag är trött. (I am tired.) Jag blir trött. (I get tired / I become tired.)

Kärlek, stjärna and sjutton: a Swedish pronunciation workout

Tack ska du ha, tack ändå och andra tack för avancerade tackare

Tackar, tack själv and tack för senast: welcome to the Swedish thank-you jungle

A short guide to ligga/lägga, stå/ställa and sitta/sätta

Lägga, ställa and sätta – three verbs that put things in their place

Ligger, står eller sitter? När “vara” inte räcker

Swedish has some tiny sound differences that look fairly harmless on the page. They sit there inside a word, minding their own business, almost identical to their neighbours. Then you open your mouth and suddenly you are no longer talking about the thing on top of a house, but something you say when someone holds the door open. Take the words tak and tack. Tak means the roof of a house. Tack is what you say when someone gives you coffee, holds the door open, or kindly prete

Falska vänner (False friends) are words that look like old friends from another language. They wave cheerfully and say, “You know me!” Then it turns out they changed personality at passport control. Swedish and English have plenty of these words. They look the same, or almost the same, but mean something else. Sometimes the difference is enormous. Sometimes it is just small enough to cause a beautifully unnecessary misunderstanding. Here are a few classics.