A Little Quiz About Swedish

Answer: Kusin

The modern Swedish words "Far", "Mor" and "Bror" are shortened versions of the older forms "Fader", "Moder" and "Broder". If you know that, it's obvious that they are cognates to English words and in fact modern-day variants of ancient words in earlier Indo-European languages. About a thousand years ago, Swedish shifted a consonant for a lisp sound to become "d". English kept the lisp sound and today spells it with "th".

In German, the shift was to "t" in the words "Vater" and "Mutter" but changed to "d" in "Bruder". "Kusin", which of course means "cousin", can trace its roots to Latin.

The oldest references in Swedish come from the 17th century, probably from French.

Answer: Low German

Today, Low German and High German are considered German dialect groups rather than languages. That's more a result of politics rather than linguistics. In the middle ages, when there was no united Germany, Low German and High German were different languages. Low German is the language of the northern parts of modern-day Germany and it has contributed heavily to modern Swedish vocabulary because of the influence of the Hanseatic League. Today's standard German comes from High German, but Low German is spoken in non-formal situations.

One of the incorrect options, Gothic, is perhaps the best-known East Germanic language. It's not spoken anymore. West Germanic Frisian is alive and well and spoken as a minority language in the Frisian islands.

Answer: Lördag

Despite the umlauts, you could probably see the similarities between Måndag/Monday and Söndag/Sunday. And Fredag/Friday are definitely cognate words. But "Lördag", the equivalent of the English Saturday, comes from the old word "lögh" with the same etymological root as the English word "lye".

The day is so named as it was the day of the week when people washed themselves and, presumably, their clothes. Danish and Norwegian share this word for Saturday.

Answer: 2

Swedish may be difficult to learn, but not because of its many cases. We have just two: nominative and genitive, indicating ownership. To get the genitive you add an "s" where you in English would add "'s": "Peter's house" becomes "Peters hus" in Swedish. We also say "Bokens sidor" where you'd say "The pages of the book" in English.

German has four cases, and many Slavic languages have more than that. And Finnish, a non-Indo-European language, has fifteen. French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese all lack case changes in nouns, even though Latin had several. Languages with a lot of cases often need fewer prepositions, which is another way to show the role of a noun in a sentence.

Pronouns, also in English, have more cases: I, me, my, etc.

Answer: Run

To an English speaker, the verb "springa" looks like the verb "spring", a word that can mean "surprise". It also looks like the English noun "spring", which bounces around. If you know German, you might guess "jump": "Springen" in German means "To jump". The actual meaning in Swedish is "run".

This is an example of an old Indo-European word that has taken on slightly different meanings in different languages.

Answer: Sidewalk / Pavement

If you don't speak Swedish or French, this was probably tough. The "trot" part can possibly give a clue that it has something to do with walking.

Answer: Agglutination

Swedish is not considered a true agglutinative language since the feature is restricted to nouns. Stacking nouns together in a theoretically endless string is also possible in, e.g., German. Other languages can build on verbs to include causality, temporal aspect, negation and other in a single word.

Answer: No

In the present tense, most verb forms end in -r and are the same for all subjects. "Jag talar" is "I speak", "Du talar" is "You speak", and so on. All you need to know is whether the ending "a" in the infinitive form should stay (as in "tala"/"talar") or be replaced by an "e" (as in "sitta"/"sitter" for the verb "sit"). If you ask a native speaker, he won't be able to tell you the grammatical rule: it's one of those things you simply know as a native speaker.

English is also an easy language to learn in this respect: only the third person singular gets an "s" at the end, except for irregular verbs such as "be".

Answer: Sandwich

A difficult question, but the etymology here is truly wonderful! "Smör" means "butter" and "gås" is the same word as "goose" in English. When you churn butter, it flocks together in little lumps. Since they float in water, like geese, the term "smörgås"/"butter goose" was applied to a small piece of butter. That's about the amount of butter you spread on a piece of bread, so the term got a transferred meaning of "(open-faced) sandwich". Traditional Swedish buffet tables contained a lot of things, but open-faced sandwiches were a staple at any feast. So, the buffet became "smörgåsbord"/"sandwich table" and then "smorgasbord" in English. Nowadays, it also has a figurative meaning: "Funtrivia has a smorgasbord of quizzes to choose from."

Answer: Computer

A computer was initially known as a "datamaskin", which should make sense to an English speaker ("data machine"). It's cumbersome to say, so people stated saying "dator": a word that reflects back on Greek words such as "motor" and "tractor". Norwegian stuck with "datamaskin" while Danish, just like German, simply took the English word "computer".