40 Comments
Swedish gets pretty funny too. If you want to say, "It's over, baby" You can say, "Det ar slut, baby".
https://translate.google.com/#sv/en/Det%20ar%20slut%2C%20baby How she pronounced "baby" is very creepy.
does this only mean "I hear you", in a literal sense of hearing with ears, or also like in English "I know exactly what you mean"? http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/I+hear+what+you%27re+saying,+and+I+hear+you
So, in a rock concert, musicians would say: Jag hör inte dig, or Jag hör dig inte?
Wouldn't it be "er" in a concert setting, rather than "dig"? Unless it was a private concert for one person...?
Yes, absolutely. I think Zmrzlina was only replying about the grammar. :)
Tack så mycket! I'm excited to be developing some intuition for Swedish grammar! I love your language and I just found out today that I was admitted to a grad program in Sweden! Now I will continue working on my Swedish tree with renewed motivation! :)
Not exactly. To listen is to both hear and to concentrate on what you hear.
To clarify I'll use the negations as an example:
"Jag hör dig inte" is "I can not hear you", that is I can not make out what you are saying (or you are sneaking quietly).
"Jag lyssnar inte på dig." is "I'm not listening to you.", That is I'm ignoring what you say.
Thanks, so it is the same as in English. From my German we have only hören.
hör = zu hören
lyssnar = zu zu hören
You may use höra på for listen when used in commands.
Hör på, jag har något viktigt att säga.
To demand more attention hör upp may be used as well.
Das ist nicht ganz richtig: Zuhören und Hören sind nicht der gleiche Verb - zu- im Fall vom Zuhören ist keine Präposition sondern ein untrennbarer, äh, trennbarer Teil des trennbaren Verbs.
Es ist bei trennbaren Verben nicht immer offensichtlich dass das tatsächlich nicht das gleiche Wort ist, aber vgl. zum Beispiel "aufhören" und "auf jmdn. hören", die nun wirklich bedeutungsmässig nicht das geringste miteinander zu tun haben ^^
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zuhören can mean both lyssna på and höra på. In Swedish, höra på can be either a particle verb or a verb + a preposition, but lyssna på is never a particle verb. You can hear the difference because the particle is always stressed in particle verbs.
The difference between höra and lyssna without the particles is pretty much the same as between hearing and listening in English. In short: höra, it reaches your ears. lyssna, you're actively paying attention.
Thank you for the clarification! While the "los/lys" root seems to have been lost in Hochdeutsch, in various Schwitzerdytsch dialects, both of those exist: "Hören" (or rather, "Hörä") for "hear" and "Losen" ("Losä") for listen, with pretty much exactly those meanings. There is also "Zuälosä" (e.g. "Jetz los mir mou zuä!") which requires somewhat more attention than just "losä". There are some differences between the usage of "hörä" in Schwitzerdytsch and "hören" in German: You'd say "Ich höre Musik" in Hochdeutsch but "Ig losä Musig" in, say, Berndytsch.
Altogether Schwitzerdytsch seems, in many aspects, to be a little closer to Swedish and/or english than Hochdeutsch is. E.g. "Running" is "Springä", "jumping" is "gumppä", etc... (There is also "sehen" (to see) vs. "luegen" (to look)). I am curious to see what other similarities I will find as I learn more Swedish...
"I hear you" can also be used as "I understand what you're saying". Is this the same for "Jag hör dig?" (Question is already asked in the thread, but wasn't answered.)
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I think it's possible, but that we do that much less frequently than in English.
"Jag hör dig" can be used as "I understand what you mean." but not often as in English. (Refer to the answers below)
Then Can I say "Jag förstå sig pa" (="I understand.")?
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In your sentence, it would be just "jag förstår".
The phrasal verb "förstå sig på" means "to understand" in the sense of getting a grip on how it works. It is transitive, meaning it needs to have an object being understood.
Can "jag hör dig" mean "I hear you..." like when you are annoyed with someone for asking you to do something or for criticizing you(like what a "teenager" would say)? Or what would you say in that case?
That might work, though I'd think the past tense might be more likely.
I need your help people.
I have been unsuccesfully looking for some clarifications about how to use 'hör'.
If you see this example "Jag hör dig", it seems thet it uses no prepositions but I saw an example that confused me in a online Swedish dictionary, on the entry for 'make', You can check it out here http://lexin.nada.kth.se/lexin/#searchinfo=both,swe_spa,make;
The example is "har du hört på maken?". Is this an idiom? Or is the preposition optional?
The only clarifying text I found was a comment by the omnipotent Arnauti in this same thread but it was not enough for me to understand. If he or anybody else could clarify this for me, I would love them for ever :)
It is actually quite simple:
att höra: to HEAR something
att höra på: to LISTEN to something
They are completely analogous to german "Hören" and "Zuhören" -- they are simply different verbs, but related by root and function (this is how stuff works in Germanic languages sometimes, and in German a lot)
Your particular example, word for word, means "Have you listened to the husband?", and a google search on it shows you that it is heavily idiomatic :-)))
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maken in har du hört på maken doesn't refer to a husband. It refers to 'something similar'. There's a word makalös meaning 'peerless' where it's used the same way. So literally it just means 'have you heard anything like this'.
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dig is the object form. They're both 'you' in English, but you can compare with You hear me instead – you don't say You hear I, it's for the same reason.
No, not at all. Two completely different vowels. An half-decent English approximation might be the vowels in hör - "sir" and har - "bar".
