Basic Swedish greetings and farewells

Okay. So, at this point, we're ready to learn some Swedish phrases. We're ready to learn how to say hi, hello, how are you, how do you feel. And it may seem a bit odd that we have waited so long to do this because usually you'll find that people in courses, they would begin with this material. But as you have noted by now, this course attempts to teach you how to construct sentences, how to start talking, how to start understanding people speaking, and when you're reading written work, instead of trying to cram in a lot of words and try to cram in a lot of phrases.

So, at this point, we're actually ready to learn how to say hi, hello, and so forth. And I suspect that many of you have already learned some of these things, but for the purposes of repetition, we'll go through them anyway.

So, to say hi or hello in Swedish, you would say hej or hallå, hallå.

So, hallå or hej. And hej is probably more common. Hallå is also not uncommon, so you will hear that as well. So whichever you feel is easiest, that's the one that you should use.

To say bye, you would say hej då, hej då. So you're adding on då. And this little word då can be used for many different things. Uh for instance, it could mean then, as in "I will do that then", Jag ska göra det då. Jag ska göra det då.

So, då is uh a sort of a filler word in Swedish. But when they're connected, hej då means goodbye.

Okay, so if you want to say "good day", you need to know how to say good because day we've had before. Do you remember the word for day?

So, to say day, you say dag, dag.

But to say "good" you would say "god", "god". So it's spelt with one o, and in Swedish you pronounce that "god".

"God dag". Probably you'll hear "goddag", "goddag", sort of combined, and the g will be omitted as well.

But then again, do you want to say "god dag"? That's perfectly fine.

So to say "good night", you would say "god natt".

'Cause "natt" means night.

Okay, so to ask somebody how they are, like in English you would come up to someone and you'd say, "How are you? How are you feeling? What's the latest? What's up?" this sort of greeting where you're asking someone how they're doing, in Swedish the most common way of doing that is asking them, "How do you feel?" So to say "how", you would say "hur", "hur".

And "feel" is "mår". "Att må", that means to feel, "att må". And when you change it, then you say "mår". So altogether, "How do you feel?" that becomes "Hur mår du?" And you can see the very Swedish structure: "du mår" - you feel, "hur mår du?" - how do you feel?

And the order is of course switched because you have a question.

Okay, so to say "I feel good, thanks"- To say "thanks", you would say "tack", "tack".

So how would you say "I feel good, thanks"?

"Jag mår bra, tack." So you could of course say "thank you", but you wouldn't say "tack dig", that's incorrect in Swedish. You would just say "tack", that means thanks.

To say "What's your name?" in Swedish- You could say: vad är ditt namn? Literally, that would translate as "what is your name?", vad är ditt namn? But it sounds a bit off. So the way you say "what is your name?" in Swedish is similar to how you would do it in, for instance, Spanish.

So you would ask someone, "What do you call yourself?" or "What are you called?" So that's how you would say "What's your name?", "What are you called?" So, "called", you would use heter, heter.

And that's the changed verb. The unchanged verb, the dictionary form, the to-form, is att heta, "to be called", att heta. But here we're going to use heter, heter. So how would you say that, "What are you called?" Vad heter du?

And if you said, "Vad du heter", then it's incorrect because you haven't made it into a question. So you always have to think, what is the sentence structure? Du heter, "you are called". If you want to make that into a question, you switch the order: heter du.

And then of course you add on, in this case, vad, which is "what". Literally, "what called you?" And that means, "What are you called?", "What's your name?", vad heter du?

Okay, so how do you then say, "I am called" or "I'm called", "My name is"?

Jag heter. And of course you can add on your name. So in, for instance, I could say: jag heter Adam. "I'm called Adam", or "My name is Adam".

Okay, so how did you say "How are you?", for one person? "How are you?" Hur mår du? And of course if you want to say, "Hur mår hon?", "How is she?", you'd add on hon. hur mår han, hur mår de, and so forth.

"I am not well here", meaning "I don't feel well here". So, how would you say this? And if you forgot the word for "here", it's very similar to English. It's spelt almost the same, but you add on "ä" instead. So "here" would become "här".

So how would you say, "I'm not feeling well here", or "I'm not well here"?

Jag mår inte bra här. Jag mår inte bra här. And of course, the "inte" always comes after the changed verb. "Jag mår inte". So it has to come after "mår".

"How is your child?" or "How's your child feeling?" How would you say that?

So you have to try to see if you could remember how to say "how". And "how" is of course "hur". To say "your", you would say "ditt". So altogether, "Hur mår ditt barn?" And if you're unsure about "din barn" or "ditt barn", that's fine, because it takes some time to get that intuition, that feeling for how a word sounds.

After a while, you get a sort of a feeling for a language, "Oh, this sounds off, this sounds right". But until then, you should probably go with "en", so go with "din" if you're unsure. In this case, if you remember that "child", "barn", is "ett barn", then of course you know it should be "ditt barn", and that's the correct way of saying it. Hur mår ditt barn?

You could of course also say, "How's the child?" And in this case that would be, "Hur mår barnet?" Barnet.

Okay, so how do you say, "My child is well", or "My child is feeling well"?

So my child would be mitt barn, not min barn, because the word is ett barn. So, mitt barn mår bra. Mitt barn mår bra.

So now, let's sort of consider some some prepositions, meaning how do you position things? Like this is in here, this is on there, and so forth. And let's look at the easiest one, perhaps, and that's in, in, like, I'm in here or inside here, in. To say in, you would say i, i. Just one letter, i. So my child is in my car.

How would you translate that to Swedish?

Mitt barn är i min bil.

Mitt barn är i min bil.

Okay, so how do you say it's a good book? It's a good book. And of course we just learned that good is bra. If you need to remember that word, think always about jag mår bra, I feel good, then you know that good is bra. So it's a good book.

Det är en bra bok.

Det är en bra bok.

What about is it a good book? Is it a good book? Now make it into a question.

Är det en bra bok? So you always switch it up. You switch the order.

Okay, so say no, it's not a good book.

Nej, det är inte en bra bok. So the changed verb here is är, comes from to be, att vara. And when you change it, it becomes är, so after that, you put inte. Nej, det är inte en bra bok.