How Swedish forms the past participle

Okay, so what was the Swedish word for "to speak"?

att tala So how do you say, "She speaks tomorrow"?

Hon talar i morgon.

"Can't we speak now?" Kan inte vi tala nu, or kan vi inte tala nu? Whichever one you prefer, both are correct.

"Do you have your car?" Har du din bil?

So do you remember how to say, "why"?

To say "why", you will say varför, varför.

So, "Why don't you have your car? Why don't you have your car?" Varför har du inte din bil? So if you said "Varför du har inte din bil?" this would be incorrect.

You can't say "Varför du". You have to say "Varför har du". You need to switch them up, the order. And the "inte", the placement is optional. So you could say "Varför har inte du din bil?", "Varför har du inte din bil?" "I have everything I need.

I have everything I need." Jag har allt jag behöver. Or you can say allting, everything, all thing.

Allting jag behöver. And the "that", just like in English, it can be omitted. So in English you can say, "I have everything that I need" or you can say "I have everything I need". And it works in a regular sentence.

In Swedish as well: "Jag har allt som jag behöver." The "som" is similar to the "that". It's the "that" that you use when you're connecting sentences, then you use "som". Jag har allt som jag behöver, or jag har allt jag behöver. To ask in Swedish, the word for ask as in to ask is att fråga, att fråga.

And it's also an -ar verb. So, how would you say "I ask" if this is an -ar verb?

Jag frågar. And of course at this point, you probably know the rest. Du frågar, han frågar, hon frågar, den/det frågar, ni frågar, de frågar, vi frågar.

And then you have the word answer: svara, att svara, to answer. And it's also -ar. How would you say "I answer"?

Jag svarar. And then of course, the remaining ones are all svarar: du svarar, han svarar, and so forth. So previously, we talked about how to go into the past. And we said one way of doing that is to use the word "have". So "I have", jag har. And we used the example of speak, so we said "I have spoken", jag har talat.

So given that knowledge that "talar" became "talat", how do you think you would say "I have asked"?

So to ask was "att fråga". So have asked, you would say "har frågat". Jag har frågat.

What about "you have asked"?

Du har frågat. And he, she has asked? Han, hon har frågat. So han har frågat, he has asked. Hon har frågat, she has asked. It has asked?

Den or det har frågat. You plural have asked? Ni har frågat. They have asked? De har frågat. And finally, vi har frågat.

Okay, so let's try to think about this a little bit more detailed. Because so far we've only looked at AR verbs, we haven't looked at ER verbs. So this is a category of verbs that end with ER like "tänka", "jag tänker", I think. So when you're going back to the past using "have" and you have one of these verbs that end with ER like "tänker" so you have two cases, such as "tänka", "att tänka", where you can remove the A, you can remove the A, the vowel, and add on T instead.

So you replace the A with a T.

Har tänkt. So what happened is that we removed the A, and instead we put in a T.

So how would you say I have thought.

Jag har tänkt. What about you have thought? Du har tänkt. Okay, what about if we change the verb? Instead of talking about think, we talk about reading.

Now, to read was att läsa. Läsa. How would you say he has read, or she has read?

Han har läst. Or hon har läst. Okay, so what about you, people, or you plural, have read?

Ni har läst. If you want to say they have not read, not, and you're negating, how would you say that?

De har inte läst.

And if you want to say specifically that you read something like it, "I have read it", how would you say that?

Jag har läst den. Or det, jag har läst det. Okay, so that was the first case. The first case where we can just remove the A, and instead we replace it with a T. However, there are other -er verbs that do not end with an A. For instance, att se.

That means—what do you think that would mean, actually, att se? It's similar to English, so I think you can figure it out. It's actually almost the same. Att se, what does that mean?

To see. It's just one E less. So, to see: att se. In this case, you have a long vowel like e, ä, ö. And if you want to refresh your memory about long vowels, I would recommend you to look at the alphabet series, where we look into this in more detail.

But in this case, if you have a long vowel, like an e, you have ä, ö, and the word ends with this, then you just add on double t, so two t's.

So att se, to see, becomes har sett, and that means have seen, har sett. So all we did was add on these double t's.

So how would you say, "I have seen"?

Jag har sett.

And, "She has seen"?

Hon har sett.

Okay, what about, "They have died"? And "died", we, the regular form, the dictionary form, is dö. So you have the long vowel, dö. So how would you say, "They have died"?

De har dött.

What about, "You people have seen", you plural have seen?

Ni har sett.

And if you want to be specific, and say, "I haven't seen it. I have not seen it", how would you say that?

Jag har inte sett den.

The word for standing, to stand, is att stå. Similar to stood, stå. They're very similar. So att stå means to stand. So how do you think you would say, "We have stood"?

Vi har stått.