Swedish false friends: 20 words that fool English speakers

slut means end. It is the word on the last frame of a Swedish film, the word a shop assistant uses when your size has sold out, and the word on a shelf label when a product has run out. Den är slut means there are none left. As a noun it is ett slut, an end, so i slutet av augusti is at the end of August. As a verb it is sluta, to stop or to finish, so jag slutar klockan fem means I finish work at five. Read it a few times here and it stops being loud, which is the entire reason to meet it on a page rather than at a counter.

fart means speed. Sänk farten is what a sign says when it wants you to slow down. En fartkamera is a speed camera. I full fart means at full speed. The formal word, the one used in traffic regulations, is hastighet, but fart is what people say and what compounds are built from.

bra means good, and it is the most used word on this list. Hur mår du? Bra, tack. Det är bra means that is fine. Bra jobbat means well done. It never changes shape, so en bra idé and ett bra jobb both keep it exactly as it is. The garment an English speaker has in mind is en bh in Swedish, said as two letter names.

The wider question of what makes Swedish easy or hard is answered in is Swedish hard to learn, which lays out the seven real difficulties. This page is about the smaller problem sitting underneath them: the words where recognition works against you. Twenty of them are worth ten minutes now, because every one is a sentence you will otherwise get wrong in front of somebody.

Used as an adjective, gift means married. Jag är gift. Hon är gift med en svensk. In the plural it takes -a like any other Swedish adjective, so de är gifta means they are married. The verb behind it is gifta sig, to get married, and vi gifte oss i somras means we got married last summer.

Used as a noun it is neuter, ett gift, and it means poison. Råttgift is rat poison. The related adjective is giftig, poisonous or toxic, so en giftig svamp is a poisonous mushroom, and giftfri on a label means free of harmful substances.

Both senses go back to the verb ge, to give, and German arrived at Gift for poison by the same route. That history is no help at conversational speed. The grammar is. If the word follows är or stands in front of a person, it is married. If it has ett in front of it or an -et on the end, it is the poison. This is one of the places where the en and ett split stops being an abstraction and starts changing what you said.

barn is a child. Ett barn, barnet, and the plural is barn again, with barnen for the children. It opens a hundred compounds you meet as a parent in Sweden: en barnvagn is a pram, ett barnbidrag is the child allowance, en barnmorska is a midwife and en barnvakt is a babysitter.

kock is a cook or a chef. En kock arbetar i ett kök, because ett kök is a kitchen, and en kokbok is a cookbook. It appears in job adverts and on restaurant windows. Say it once at home and it will not catch you in a conversation.

sex is the number six. Klockan sex is six o'clock, sexton is sixteen, sextio is sixty. Swedish uses the same word for the other meaning as well and lets the context settle it, which is why nobody hears anything strange in vi ses klockan sex.

full describes a container that is full and a person who is drunk. Bussen är full is ordinary. Jag är full, said after dinner, is not what you meant. The word you want is mätt: jag är mätt, tack. A venue with no seats left is fullsatt.

kaka is a biscuit or a plain cake, not the one with cream in it. That is en tårta, and the cinnamon bun everyone has at fika is en kanelbulle. The word crossed into English centuries ago, and the two languages have put it to different work since.

semester is a holiday. Swedish has no other everyday word for it. Semesterdagar are the paid days themselves, and a colleague asking Har du haft en bra semester? is asking about your summer, not about your studies. An academic term is en termin, so a university course runs över två terminer.

eventuellt means possibly. Vi ses eventuellt på fredag means we might meet on Friday, not that we will meet in the end. On a form, vid eventuella frågor means if you have any questions. The English eventually is till slut or så småningom.

aktuell means current, topical, or still on the table. Är tjänsten fortfarande aktuell? asks whether a job is still open. Det är inte aktuellt means it is not being considered. Aktuella priser are the current prices. The English actual is faktisk or verklig.

recept is a recipe, and it is also a prescription. Receptbelagd means prescription only and receptfri means available over the counter, and both are printed on the shelves at the pharmacy. The receipt in your pocket is ett kvitto. The rest of that counter vocabulary is in pharmacy Swedish.

novell is a short story. A novel is en roman. A shelf marked noveller is offering you something a good deal shorter than you think.

gå means to walk when a person is the one moving. Jag går till jobbet means I walk to work. Travelling by vehicle is åka: jag åker buss, jag åker tåg. The wider sense survives in set phrases, since hur gick det? means how did it go, and tåget går klockan tre means the train leaves at three. With a person and a destination, though, it is on foot.

vill means want. Jag vill ha kaffe means I want coffee, and the ha is not optional once an object follows. The future is ska or kommer att, so jag ska ringa dig means I will call you. This is the false friend that quietly changes what you promised somebody.

springa means to run. Jag springer varje morgon means I run every morning. The season spring is en vår, and to jump is hoppa. Nothing in the English word helps you here, which is why this one is worth saying out loud once.

känna means to feel, and also to know a person. Jag känner honom means I know him. Facts take veta instead: jag vet var han bor. En känsla is a feeling, and känna igen is to recognise. English covers both jobs with one verb, and swapping the two Swedish ones is one of the most common beginner errors.

rolig means fun or funny. Det var roligt means that was fun. Danish and Norwegian use the same word for calm, and Swedish keeps that older sense only in the noun ro, as in i lugn och ro. The Swedish word for calm is lugn.

hemsk means horrible. Det var hemskt väder means the weather was awful. It has nothing to do with feeling at home, and the cosy word you were reaching for is mysig.

The list of false friends is short precisely because the rest of the overlap holds. The auxiliaries line up almost one for one: jag kan simma, jag måste gå, han har varit här, vi ska åka. The verb after them stays in the infinitive with no att, in the same way English drops the to after can and must.

Three spellings hide words you already own. An initial hj-, lj- or dj- loses its first letter in speech, and a familiar word is often sitting underneath. Hjälpa is help, hjärta is heart, hjul is wheel, djup is deep, and ljus is light. Read past the first letter before you decide a word is new to you.

The Latin layer is nearly free. Nouns in -tion are spelled as in English and take en every time: en station, en situation, en nation, en ambition. Verbs in -era are one short step from their English relatives: reservera, diskutera, organisera, informera, fungera. This is why an English speaker reads far above their speaking level during the first months in Sweden.

So treat a resemblance as a good bet rather than a proof. It usually pays. The twenty words above are where it does not, and knowing which is which is most of the work.

The fix is to check, and it takes fifteen seconds. Svenska Akademiens ordlista is free at svenska.se and gives the gender, the forms and the sense of every word on this page. A word you looked up once is a word you learned once. A word you guessed is one you will learn twice, and the second time will be in front of somebody.

Store it inside a sentence rather than beside an English gloss. gift on a flashcard is ambiguous and jag är gift is not. slut on a flashcard is ambiguous and mjölken är slut is not. The sentence carries the meaning, the gender and the occasion in one piece, which is also what makes it arrive at the till on time instead of three seconds late. The grammar reference here has the patterns behind the forms.

Take the twenty words above and say each one tonight inside a sentence you would really use. The weeks before your SFI place comes through are the cheapest hours you will ever spend on Swedish, and this is the corner of the language where ten minutes now replaces one very specific bad afternoon later.