Possessive pronouns in Swedish change form depending on the gender of the noun they describe, so my book and my house use different words for my. This lesson introduces min and mitt with concrete examples and shows how a statement flips into a question by swapping word order.
Vocabulary in this lesson
Transcript
The full transcript of this free lesson. Swedish lines have their English translation underneath.
So to say "I", how would you say that in Swedish?
Jag. What about "you" for one person?
Du.
What about "he", or if you want to say "she"?
Han, hon.
If you want to say "it", we said there are two different variants. You can say det or you can say den. And to some extent, it depends on if the word is a en-word or a ett-word. But it's also a bit more complex, so we can talk more about it later on. But for now, you should just be aware that there are different ways to say it. So how would you say "you", a lot of people?
Ni.
What about "they", as in a group of people?
De. And finally, how do you say "we"?
Vi. Good. Do you know what the word for "house" was? Do you remember that?
Ett hus. Ett hus. So it's a ett-word, it's not a en-word.
You would say mitt, mitt. That's how you say "my", mitt.
So how would you then say "my house"?
Mitt hus.
How do you say "what" in Swedish?
It's vad.
So how would you say "what is it", "what is it"?
Vad är det?
And here you would hear, usually in Swedish, they would omit like the last consonant, so the last letter in certain words. Instead of hearing the, you know, pronunciation very clearly enunciated like vad är det, Instead, you would hear it usually in regular spoken Swedish as vad är det?
Vad är det? So the d is falling off, the r in är is falling off, and the t in det is falling off. Vad är det? This is what you might hear when people are speaking on the street, or regularly, or even in sort of formal situations.
So, but if you say vad är det, it's perfectly understandable.
"It is my house." How would you say that?
Det är mitt hus. Det är, "it is," "my house," mitt hus. Okay. So now we have "it is your house," and to say "your", you would say ditt, ditt. So in Swedish, "it is your house." Det är ditt hus, or you may hear it as "det är ditt hus." Can you make this into a question?
"Is it your house?" Är det ditt hus? So all you do is switch the order, just like you would in English. So "you can," "can you?" is a question, so you switch the order.
Same here. So usually it's det är ditt hus, so you switch them up, it becomes är det ditt hus. So what was the word for "a car"?
En bil.
So here it's an -en word, en bil.
So how do you say, "I have a car"?
Jag har en bil.
So here you have a question. "Do you have a car? No, it is his car." So to say "his", you would say hans, hans.
So it's similar to han, which is he. You add on the s and you get the hans, his. So how would you say, "Do you have a car? No, it is his car." Okay, so here we need to break it up.
"Do you have a car?" First, you need to think "You have a car," and don't think about the "do," because "do" is a very English thing. So, "You have a car," du har en bil. Switch them up: Har du en bil? So that's the question.
Then you say, "No," nej. "It is his car," Nej, det är hans bil. Okay. So, to say "her," you'd say hennes, hennes. So how would you say, "It is her house"?
Det är hennes hus.
Okay. So now, this longer sentence: "Is it my book? No, it is his book." Är det min bok? Nej, det är hans bok.
So here, min, you have to use that because bok is "en" word like en bok. Therefore, if you want to say "my book", it's not like in English you can say "my" for everything. So here you have to say min. It's either min or mitt, depending on the gender of the word, meaning depending on if the word is e-n or e-t-t, ett.
Okay. So how do you ask the question, "Is it her phone?" Är det hennes telefon? The regular sentence would be det är hennes telefon. So you switch it up, it becomes a question: Är det hennes telefon?