Irregular Swedish comparatives: bra, bättre, bäst

So the last one, and of course the most annoying one as always, is the one that relates to the irregular. The irregular are words that don't conform to our system of trying to customize everything, trying to put everything in a particular file and have it proper and orderly. Instead, these words, they give us a lot of headache because there's no systematized way of looking at them. So for instance, in English, you have "good", right, "good".

And you don't say "gooder", you don't say "more good", but you say "better" when you want to compare. He is better.

And of course "best", he is the best. For "bad", you get "worse" and of course "worst". And then "little" is "less" and "least". In Swedish, you have similarly, you have bra, which means good, it's also irregular, like jag mår bra, I feel good, so bra is good. So to say better, you would say bättre, bättre.

Similar to "better", but slightly different.

And then you have best is bäst. It's pronounced almost identically, I would say, bäst, you're the best, du är bäst. Pretty much identical pronunciation.

But of course, in Swedish, it's spelled with ä. Dålig is bad, sämre is worse, sämre. And to say worst, you would say sämst, sämst.

Liten means little, mindre means less, and then minst, that's how you say the least. Okay, so these are probably the most important, among the most important irregular verbs because you use them a lot and very often. You say bra, bättre, bäst, dålig, sämre, sämst, so they are pretty good words to sort of practice.

And the good thing is that most words will probably fit into either the first category or the second category. you can say more intelligent, more interesting or the category where you have smartest, smartast, and so forth. How do you say "a work" in Swedish? And it's closely related to the word "to work".

Ett arbete. So ett arbete means "a work". You can also say "a job", ett jobb.

And to say "to work", you would say att arbeta. So it becomes an A instead: att arbeta.

So to say "warmer", you would say varmare. So varm means "warm". Varmare is, of course, "warmer". So how do you think you would say "warmest" in Swedish?

Varmast. Varmast. Okay, so to say the sentence here: "It is warmer in Bali than in London", how would you say that?

Det är varmare i Bali än i London. "She has presented it better." Hon har presenterat den, or presenterat det, bättre, depending on the context.

"Our work is not worse than yours." Vårt arbete är inte sämre än ditt. Vårt arbete är inte sämre än ditt. And if you want to use "yours" for plural, it would be: vårt arbete är inte sämre än ert. "Do you need to be the smartest person in the world?" So here we have a question: "Do you need to be the smartest person in the world?" So how do you say this?

So first, you need to know how to say "need". How do you say "need", "to need"? Att behöva. And, of course: jag behöver, han behöver, du behöver, And the rest is pretty familiar, so how do you say, "Do you need to be the smartest person in the world?" Behöver du vara den smartaste personen i världen?

So if you break it up, you have behöver du, do you need, behöver du vara. Vara is of course "to be", att vara. Så behöver du vara den smartaste personen i världen. The smartest person in the world.

Okay, so let's acquire a couple of new words. And one such word is the word for "address", which is spelt almost the same: you have one "d" that's missing, which is very confusing. You always have to think, well which one was the English one, which one was the Swedish one? But for the Swedish one you have one "d", so you say en adress.

"An address" becomes en adress. To say "a store" in Swedish, you don't have the word "store" or "shop". Instead you say affär or butik. Now butik is interesting because you do have this in English. You say a "boutique", a boutique shop, a boutique firm.

So "boutique", which comes from French, is related to the word, the Swedish word butik. So it comes from the same root. En butik, en affär. En affär can also mean like "transaction": vi gör en affär, "we make a transaction".

So anything that has to do with business, affär is usually related to it. So affärsvärld would mean "business world", affärstransaktion, "business transaction". Just affär could mean a business or a deal of some sort. So affär is a very versatile word in Swedish.

Whichever one is easiest for you, you should go with that. Butik is of course similar to the English one, so you could go with that, so that is perfectly fine, en butik. But in Swedish butik is not a specialized boutique firm or boutique shop. It simply means "shop", butik.