Reading in Swedish without the dictionary shuffle
Looking words up is what makes reading in a new language slow. A Swedish dictionary lists bil, but the text says bilarna; it lists sjukförsäkring but not sjukförsäkringsavgiften. The reader does that step for you: it finds the dictionary form behind an inflected word, and splits compounds it has never seen into words it knows.
| In the text | Found as | How |
|---|---|---|
| bilarna | bil, car | the plural definite form of bil |
| sprang | springa, run | the past tense of springa |
| större | stor, big | the comparative of stor |
| kvällstidningens | kväll + s + tidning, evening + newspaper | a compound, split into its parts |
| Lagerlöf | a name | capitalised in mid-sentence and not in the word list |
Choosing a level
Pick the level just above where you are. The marked words are the ones most worth saving: words you will meet again. If almost every line is marked, the text is probably too hard to enjoy yet; the text difficulty checker gives a quick verdict, and the graded readers have classic Swedish texts sorted by level, with glossaries and questions.
A good routine
Read a short text twice. The first time, tap only the words that stop you from following the story. The second time, save the five or ten words you think you will need again, and let the rest go. Export the list once a week and review it in Anki or on paper. A few words that come up again and again beat a long list you never look at.
Long compounds have their own tool: the compound splitter shows each part and the linking letters between them. For a word's examples and forms, open it in the dictionary.
Word data: Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0), Folkets lexikon (CC BY-SA 2.5) and word frequencies from OpenSubtitles by Hermit Dave (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Frequently asked questions
Is the text I paste sent anywhere?
No. The page downloads a word list once (about a megabyte, compressed) and every lookup, highlight and export happens on your device. Your text is never uploaded, and we never see it. Saved words are kept in your browser's own storage.
How does it find the meaning of an inflected word?
The word list holds the inflected forms of about 60,000 Swedish words, so bilarna leads to bil, sprang to springa and större to stor. A word that isn't in the list is tried as a compound: sommarstugan becomes sommar + stuga, each with its meaning.
What do the A1 to B2 levels mean here?
They are a rough guide based on word frequency, not an official CEFR word list. A1 marks every word outside the 1,000 most common Swedish word forms, A2 outside the top 2,000, B1 outside 5,000 and B2 outside 10,000. A word counts as common if either the form in the text or its dictionary form is that common.
How do I get my saved words into Anki?
Press Download for Anki, then in Anki choose File, Import and pick the file. It is a tab-separated text file with the Swedish word (with en or ett for nouns), the English meaning and the sentence you found it in. The CSV download opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
Why is the reading voice robotic, or missing?
The page uses your device's own Swedish voice, so the quality depends on your system. Chrome and Edge include good Swedish voices; on Windows and macOS you can add one in the speech settings.
Are the meanings always right?
They are short dictionary glosses, so they give the most common senses and not always the one your sentence uses. A word like var can be was, where or each, and the reader shows the most likely readings first. Follow the dictionary link for examples.