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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Jag älskar en kvinna."
30 Comments
I'd say, make sure that she needs you to struggle for her at first. Otherwise it could be irritating for a woman If she doesn't want to hurt you and has to suffer. Tastes differ and you can't force a woman to love you, at least If you are not a person that she would like to love possibly. We sometimes fight a war that we cannot win or we which we lost already. Keep struggling to master the language instead! If you're a professional, you will be more probably in demand! The language is with you for your whole life, most women are not :D. Lycka till!
Is there a way to say lady instead of woman, but not imply some level of royalty or older age (such as damen seems to do?) In the American South, referring to an adult female as a woman vs. a lady has a strong connotation. Is there any similar social issue in Swedish?
”Tjej” is too young and ”dam” is too old, I don’t think we have any other neutral word than ”kvinna”.
In some contexts "dam" is used without implying older age:
- Mina damer och herrar... (Ladies and gentlemen)
- Damerna först! (Ladies first!)
- When talking about sports: "Dam-VM i fotboll" (Women's football world cup), "damlandslaget" (women's national team, as opposed to herrlandslaget), "Sveriges damer vann finalen" (Sweden's women won the final), etc.
- Toilets and changing rooms are for "damer" or "herrar"
- More?
How cool is it that the default word for woman is Swedish, "kvinna" sounds very much like the word queen in English. Does anyone know of any correlation between the two?
They look related, but they come from slightly different roots. The word that kvinna came from, Proto-Germanic *kwenǭ (woman), gave rise to "quean", which is a slightly... ruder word for woman. English "queen" came from *kwēniz, wife, which does not have an equivalent in modern Swedish. But if "queen" helps you remember kvinna, then sure, they sound pretty similar. [2019/05/06]
Just to be clear, *kwoeniz is an inflectional variant of *kwenon. They're not as much different roots as they are the same root, from different constructions. Etymological literature normally lists "queen" and kvinna, kona as closely related.
/ˈkvɪnːˌa/, just a k and a v next to each other like the s and t in "stop" are. Practice saying it: kv, kv, kv. [2019/05/06]
Älskar - loves. Kärlek - love.
Kärlek always means the same thing, but "Kär" och "Älska" have slightly different connotations. "att vara kär" - to be in love - tends to imply infatuation, whereas "att älska" - to love - implies a deeper love, at least when referring to another person.
To like is either "att tycka om" or "att gilla" in Swedish.
I like a woman - Jag tycker om en kvinna / jag gillar en kvinna.
I'm still somewhat confused about the pronunciation of "jag". I seems like it can be jog, jo, ja and, as it is in this case, je. I'm now starting to realise that it might depend on what sort of syllable it's in front of? Since in this case it's a soft "äls", "jag" becomes softer and so you pronounce it "je"?
Am I correct?
The vowel sound doesn't change. it's always like the vowel sound in "log" (at least for standard American accents.) The only thing that changes is that the "g" and the end can be dropped in everyday speech.
That doesn't really work, I'm afraid, since heter is for being named rather than called.
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Sometimes "jag" sounds like /jóg/ and sometimes /jég/. Does this variation really exist or is it just my untrained ears playing tricks on me?
Honestly probably the latter. The jeg pronunciation is Danish/Norwegian.
