"Han har alltid velat laga mat åt mig."

Translation: He has always wanted to cook for me.

[Adnan5885]

can someone explain why is there, åt, and not, for example, för?

[sustained]

There can be a lot of overlap between för/till/åt.

I think that åt is supposed to imply that you are doing the person some kind of favour, or are doing something for them because they can't, or don't have time or some such. Otherwise, I think it's okay to use the others?

I read a decent post about it once on a blog called The Swedish Teacher on this website but it's down at the moment.

[devalanteriel]

That is indeed often the case, but it's not a rule, and it doesn't apply to this sentence, for instance.

[devalanteriel]

Just how prepositions work - Swedish likes this one, English likes another one.

[Zamfir160900]

So is there some kind of generalization of when to use "åt" instead of "för" or "till"? Can you give other examples where "åt" is used in a similar way?

[devalanteriel]

Generally speaking:

• giving: till
• performing for: för
• doing for: åt

I think there may be a better rule but I can't quite remember at the moment, I'm afraid.

[Zamfir160900]

That clears a lot. Thanks :)

[dcounts]

"He has always wanted to throw food at me." Just kidding. I would have used "till", but you learn something new every day.

[devalanteriel]

Well, that would be på - while till would be throwing to. :)

[Elena699431]

Mistake, mat means food and it's missing in English version, so obviously it will show mistake, smbd fix it!

[devalanteriel]

No, the verbs work differently. If you "cook" in English, it's obvious that you're cooking food. But just laga doesn't mean "cook" in Swedish - it means "fix". Hence, you need to specify laga mat for it to mean "cook".