Lära: the Swedish verb for teach and learn

Okay, let's continue on practicing our adjectives.

"Her car is white." To say "white" in Swedish, you would say vit, vit.

So how do you say: "Her car is white"?

Hennes bil är vit. Hennes bil är vit. What about "She has a white car"?

Hon har en vit bil. Hon har en vit bil.

Now what if you want to describe her car like this, and say "her white car", "her white car"? What would you need to do with vit in order to make that sentence work in Swedish?

hennes vita bil So you have to put an a after vit in order for it to work. Hennes vita bil, her white car. What about "his white car"?

hans vita bil Okay, if you want to say, "Her white car was here," how would you say that?

Hennes vita bil var här. Because of course, "was" is var, var.

To say "meet" in Swedish, and not "meat" as in the thing you eat or, you know, animal meat, talking about "meet" as in "meeting". M-E-E-T, in Swedish that would be möta, att möta. So to say "I meet", you would say jag möter, jag möter.

So du möter, han möter, hon möter, den möter, det möter, ni möter, de möter, vi möter.

Let's say, "She meets them." How would you say that? "She meets them." Hon möter dem. Hon möter dem.

And of course, like in many cases in Swedish, you can hear some letters fall off, so you might hear "hon möte' dem", without the R. So what about, "He meets us now"?

Han möter oss nu. So do you remember how to say "everything" in Swedish?

Allting. And you could say "allt". If you want to say "everyone", speaking about human beings, you would say, "alla". And that means "everyone". Alla.

So how would you say, "They meet everyone"?

De möter alla. De möter alla. And of course you would need to sort of continue on this one: "De möter alla människorna". They meet all the people. Or you could say, "They meet us all, they meet us all", because "alla" is like "all" in English.

So perhaps that's even a better way to remember it, is think of the English "all" and then you add on an A, so you get "alla". So how would you say, "They meet us all"?

De möter oss alla. De möter oss alla. Now something that's very peculiar about Swedish, very interesting, I would say, you use the same word in Swedish to talk about learning something as you do talking about teaching something, which I think is extremely fascinating about Swedish, and that's why also we should perhaps touch on this before the end of this course.

Now in Swedish, to say "I learn", you would say att lära. Att lära. If you want to say "I learn": Jag lär.

And then you learn, du lär, han lär, and so forth. So let's see how this word lär can take on both meanings. We start out by looking at the first meaning that relates to teaching. So if you say "she teaches us", in Swedish, to say "she teaches us", you'd say exactly what I showed you before, like "she learns us".

So how would you say that? Hon lär oss. And if you say that, hon lär oss, that means she's teaching us.

What about "he teaches us Swedish"? Han lär oss svenska.

To say "he teaches me nothing" or "he doesn't teach me anything", in Swedish you would say "he teaches me nothing". So how would you say that? And of course "nothing", do you remember how to say "nothing"?

Ingenting, ingenting. You could say inget also, if you prefer. So "he teaches me nothing". Han lär mig ingenting. And that's like saying he doesn't teach me anything.

"He doesn't teach me anything", you would say han lär mig ingenting.

Now, to see how this can be used to talk about learning something as opposed to teaching something, what you would do is you add on the reflexive. So the reflexive was when you talked about something applying to yourself, like "he washes himself". Do you remember how to say that? Han tvättar sig, right? So if you want to say "she learns", you'd say "she teaches herself".

And I think that's very, very fascinating feature about the Swedish language, precisely because it says something about the philosophy of learning in Swedish. And that's the idea that, in order for you to learn something, you have to teach it to yourself. Obviously, you receive this knowledge from some other external source, but in order for you to inculcate that knowledge and to truly understand it, you need to teach yourself.

So, how do you say "she learns herself"—literally, "she teaches herself"?

Hon lär sig. And "hon lär sig" means "she learns". What about "I learn Swedish" using this formula?

Jag lär mig svenska.

And finally, "I have learned Swedish". And to say "learned" in the past using "have", "have learned", you would say "har lärt".

So finally, the last example, how would you say, "I have learned Swedish"?

Jag har lärt mig svenska.

Jag har lärt mig svenska. I hope you've learned Swedish during the course of these lessons, and you can stay tuned for more content, more lessons, more advanced lessons, and of course repeating. Repeating is the true way of learning something. "Repetitio est mater studiorum" was the old Latin expression, that "repetition is the mother of all study".

If you truly want to learn something, you need to repeat it over and over and over and over again. And so with that said, tack för att du kom, thanks for coming, and I'll see you in the next videos. Hej då!