"You swim."

Translation: Du simmar.

[Cogwrite]

Im gonna remember swimming as simmar cause the first time i heard it, i thought of little people in a soup pot in bathing costumes simmering and now that mental image wont leave

[LouMimzy1]

You have just transplanted that image in my head...lol thanks i will never forget this word now.

[Marien401]

When do you use Du and when Ni?

[frisno]

For a single person you use "Du". "Ni" are used for multiple people and members of the royal family.

[stockholmer]

is 'simmar du' correct also? I recall my friend telling me to say 'hoppas jag' instead of 'jag hoppas'

[gramphos]

The case with "hoppas" is a little bit special. By just having the fragment of the statement it is hard to tell what your friend referred to but I guess it could be expressions like the following "I hope I will pass the exam". In that case it is common to leave out the first I and infinitive "att" so that instead of "Jag hoppas att jag klarar tentan" you just say "Hoppas jag klarar tentan".

[stockholmer]

thank you very much, that was really helpful!

[Lundgren8]

That would be a question: Do you swim? or Do you hope?

[stockholmer]

thank you very much!

[Bearzerker]

Can you not say "du bada"?

[Arnauti]

No, bada is the infinitive but you'd need the present tense: badar. Otherwise yes. The difference in meaning is that bada is about being in the water and simma refers to the action of propelling oneself forward in the water.

[Linguist-wannabe]

I've seen the strong variant of this verb too, is simmer used more often, seldom, or at the same rate?

[Arnauti]

simmer isn't a word in Standard Swedish, although there are some dialects (Värmland comes to mind) that will consistently pronounce the -ar at the end of any verb as -er.

There's variation for the past tense though: today most people say simma, simmade, simmat 'swim, swam, swum' but in the past, simma, sam, summit was more common.

[Linguist-wannabe]

Oh, thank you for the reply. It just came to my mind after looking up this word on Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/simma says, that "the strong inflection has started to gain some notoriety during the last 20 years", so I wanted to clarify. Nevertheless, tusen tack!

[Arnauti]

I think they mean people have started saying it as a joke – some people like to 'strengthen' verbs that were never strong too, just because it sounds funny. There are whole blogs dedicated to that :D

[Nightskymama]

Att simma is to swim so why is it simmar here? Is it because it isn't written after the word att?