The Swedish continuous past: talade

So, yet another way to go into the past is to use the line in the past to talk about the continuous form in the past, something that was continuous. So for instance, so you could say "I spoke", you can say "I have spoken", you can also say "I was speaking" and you're talking about the past: "I was speaking to him when this happened." That's another way of going to the past.

It's to talk about something that was continuous. And people will expect you to continue on with the sentence when you're saying that. So if I said "I spoke yesterday", then I can put a dot, I can put a period and it's finished. However, if I want to say "I was speaking", then all of a sudden there's an expectation, one might say, that I need to finish that sentence.

I need to say "I was speaking..." "Well, what happened?" "I was speaking, and then something happened. I was speaking and then..." So you need to continue on with the sentence. It's the same in Swedish.

But the good thing about Swedish is that the forms are exactly the same. So "I was speaking", to say that, you would say jag talade. So to say "jag talade", that means "I was speaking". It also means "I spoke", jag talade. That's really easy.

No need to learn a new form, you just use the same one. "You were speaking" du talade.

And the rest we know: han/hon talade, den/det talade, ni talade, de talade, vi talade. You use the same form as "spoke", so "we spoke" vi talade, "we were speaking" vi talade.

How do you say "night" in Swedish?

Natt. Natt. And of course it should be en natt.

"He was speaking the whole night." To say whole, you'd say hela, hela. So how would you say he was speaking the whole night?

Han talade hela natten. Do you recall how to say wash, to wash?

So to say wash, talked about that when we were talking about the reflexive verb. So, tvätta sig to wash oneself, tvätta mig to wash myself. So, to wash is att tvätta.

And it's an -ar, It follows the same pattern as tvättar. So, how do you think you'd say we were washing the whole night? And here it's almost implied that you were washing clothes when you say this in Swedish. So, how do you say we were washing the whole night?

Vi tvättade hela natten. What about we were washing the whole day?

Vi tvättade hela dagen. Dagen is that day, en dag.

They were asking me many questions. So to say questions you would say frågor. So en fråga, a question. And then many questions, frågor. So they were asking me many questions.

De frågade mig många frågor. And perhaps a more common way would be to say they posed to me many questions. De ställde mig många frågor. Men de frågade mig många frågor is perfectly fine grammatically. So we'll go with that for now. De frågade mig många frågor.

How do you say they asked us too many questions?

De frågade oss för många frågor. And if you try to think about it in an exaggerated way like "för många frågor", too many questions, then it might be easier to remember that "too" is "för". So, how do you say "home" in Swedish?

Hem.

"I was in my home the whole day." So, to say "I was", you would say "jag var". So, we have "is" - "är", in the present. "I was" - "jag var". So, "I was in my home the whole day." Jag var i mitt hem hela dagen.

Jag var i mitt hem hela dagen. It's "mitt hem" because "ett hem". But when you're talking about "at home", you can say "hemma". So, you don't say "ett", you simply say "hemma". So, how do you say "We were", and then use "hemma", "the whole day"?

Vi var hemma hela dagen. Okay. So, what about "They were asking me many questions"? Like we had before.

De frågade mig många frågor.

And "They asked me too many questions"?

De frågade mig för många frågor. What was the word for "yesterday"?

Igår.

How do you say "I was"?

Jag var.

"I was at home"? Jag var hemma. Jag var hemma.

So, "I was at home yesterday"?

Jag var hemma igår.

So now, we're going to learn something that's very interesting and probably one of the things that's most confusing for non-Swedish speakers. In Swedish, when you use what's called an adverb, grammatically, and we don't need to think about the grammatical term here, but as soon as you use a word that modifies the sentence, that modifies the sentence. So, for instance, you have a sentence here: "I was at home." That's a sentence.

I modify that sentence by adding "yesterday." So now, I put a time modification on it. So, "I was at home yesterday." I could have said, "I was usually at home." I've modified it again. If you add a modification like that, and you put the modified thing in the beginning of the sentence, in Swedish, that means you have to switch the word order.

So this is something that's highly unintuitive to English speakers, but it's something that Swedish people do all the time. So, for instance, you have, "I was at home yesterday." That's the regular sentence structure. It's the exact same in Swedish: Jag var hemma igår. If we put the time period in the beginning, we say, "Yesterday I was at home." In English, you can see that the structure is the same.

You just put the "yesterday" in front of everything. In Swedish, this is not the case. So if you say "igår", then you have to switch the order between "jag var" and make it into "var jag". And this is very important, otherwise it sounds off.

So "Yesterday I was at home", you would have to say: Igår var jag hemma. If you say: Igår jag var hemma, it sounds off. So this is one of those things that you'll need to practice your ear And after a while, you'll begin to develop a sort of a intuition. It's that intuition that we're looking for, the feeling of this feels right, this feels wrong. So as soon as you add on that modification, in this case, yesterday, but it's the same if you say tomorrow, if you say last month, or whatever, so you have to switch the order.

So the easiest way perhaps to think about this is that you treat it the same way you would treat a question. If you have a question, you need to change the word order, so "I can" becomes "can I". Well, in Swedish, if you add on this modification, such as using time: yesterday, tomorrow, last month, whatever, then you need to switch the order.

So let's look at a few more examples. How do you say "tomorrow"?

i morgon "He is coming." How would you say that? "He is coming" or "he comes"?

Han kommer. Han kommer.

What about "he's coming tomorrow"?

Han kommer i morgon. So now if we switch the order and we say "Tomorrow he is coming", how would you say that in Swedish?

I morgon kommer han. So it's very important that you switch between these two. Usually you would say "han kommer", but because we put "i morgon", we put this modifying term in the beginning, now we have to switch the order. So: I morgon kommer han.

What about "tomorrow we are presenting"?

I morgon presenterar vi. So instead of looking at this as an obstacle, try to look at it as something that's interesting about the language, something that's different about the language, and perhaps it becomes a bit easier to swallow.