Learn how to ask "What?"
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Hej, jag heter Elin. Hi everybody! I’m Elin. |
| Welcome to SwedishPod101.com’s “Svenska på 3 minuter”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Swedish. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb att komma. |
| We will now jump into our lessons dedicated to question words in Swedish. Our first one is the most commonly used question word in Swedish, and that is "What." You’ll see that it’s a short and simple word in Swedish. Namely, Vad. |
| So imagine you want to ask your friend what he is doing. How would you do that? |
| You would ask- Vad gör du? |
| [slowly] Vad gör du? |
| So let’s break down this answer. |
| Vad is the interrogative "What" in Swedish. |
| gör is the present time of the verb "to do". |
| And finally we have du as you probably are familiar with by now. It means “you”. |
| So, all together it is Vad gör du? |
| What are you doing? |
| Note that in Swedish, vad will always be the first word in the sentence when asking “what” questions. |
| Here’s another example. Asking someone’s name would be. |
| Vad heter du? |
| [slowly]Vad heter du? |
| This means “What is your name?” |
| Here vad is the first word, followed by heter which means “is called/named”. |
| And finally du which you should know by now “you”. |
| Asking “what is it” or “what is that” is as easy as in English. Just say- |
| Vad är det? |
| [slowly]Vad är det? |
| Also, we can use a word we already learned to ask peoples’ preferences. |
| Vad för slags mat gillar du? |
| [slowly]Vad för slags mat gillar du? |
| It means “What kind of food do you like?” |
| To which I bet you already know how to answer. jag gillar... |
| Now it’s time for Elin’s insights. |
| A heavily used phrase in Swedish is “what’s up”. Vad händer? Like English the phrase is used to initiate conversation. Often if you want to spend time with the person you would initiate the conversation with a vad händer? It’s an incredibly practical phrase to have when you’re around Swedes, so I’ll say it again. |
| Vad händer? |
| Before ending this lesson, let’s look at one more use for vad, a question you will likely hear quite often in Sweden. “What do you want?” Vad vill du ha? |
| [slowly]Vad vill du ha? |
| You will no doubt hear it when people are serving you food, in restaurants, cafés. So remember it in case someone asks. |
| In this lesson, we learned the Swedish word for “what”. It’s a simple word, yet its usage is wide and you might have a hard time remembering all the different questions you can ask, but don’t worry, just practice. |
| Next lesson, we will talk about the Swedish word for the interrogative word "Where". |
| Do you know it already? I can promise it’s just as easy as "what"! |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Svenska på 3 minuter lesson. |
| Vi ses! |
Comments
Hide