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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Swedish word of the day: skön

This is a word that often appears in Swedish tongue twisters, but there's more to 'skön' than meets the eye.

Published: 5 September 2019 16:21 CEST
Swedish word of the day: skön
A useful Swedish word. Image: nito103/Depositphotos

Skön – as you may guess from its similarities with the German word 'schön' – comes from the Middle High German word 'schoene', and as many other Swedish words, it is short but with a huge variety of meanings.

Let's go through them, but first, let's talk about pronunciation.

The dreaded Swedish sj-sound (or in this case sk) is a so-called voiceless fricative phoneme which can be found in tongue twisters such as sju sköna sjuksköterskor. It is notoriously hard to pronounce for newcomers and it does not help that Swedes pronounce it wildly differently depending on where in Sweden they grew up.

It may help to think of the sj-sound (IPA: ɧ) as a breathy 'sh' or a sort of sigh through rounded lips. You can also click the audio symbol on the Swedish Academy dictionary website to listen to how to pronounce skön.

Here's what the sj-sound sounds like:

Skön means 'beautiful' and appears in compound words such as skönhet (beauty), skönmåla (painting something in a better light) or skönlitteratur (fiction). However, note that if you only want to refer to a person or scenery as beautiful, it is more common these days to describe them as vacker or even snygg.

If you do use the word skön to talk about a person, it will more likely be interpreted as a reference to their personality, that they are simply a nice and relaxed person to be around. I'm not a linguist, but I would imagine that someone who uses skön this way is the kind of person who also feels comfortable calling people 'dude' or 'Hi guys, I'm Emma and I'm going to be your server today, is everything all right for you guys?'*

Conversely, a person who is oskön (who I guess many might say is the kind of person who makes snarky comments about people who use the words skön or dude) is not very nice at all. The prefix o is often used in Swedish as a form of negation for adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns, similar to the English prefix 'un-'.

Skön is perhaps most often used to describe something that is pleasant to touch or just nice or refreshing in general. For example, vilken skön soffa ('what a comfortable couch'), det är skönt att duscha efter en löptur ('it's nice to shower after a run') or det skulle vara skönt med semester ('it would be nice to have a holiday').

Kattens päls är mjuk och skön (the cat's fur is soft and comfortable). Image: via GIPHY

Examples

Vad skönt att han gick, han var riktigt irriterande

What a relief that he left, he was really annoying

Det är skönt att ligga och dra sig på morgonen

It's nice to have a lie-in in the morning

Thank you to reader Prajakta Shirodkar for suggesting this word. Do you have a favourite Swedish word you would like to nominate for our word of the day series? Get in touch by email or if you are a Member of The Local, log in to comment below.

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SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: annandag

Today is annandag pingst, but what does annandag actually mean?

Published: 20 May 2024 11:16 CEST
Swedish word of the day: annandag

Many Swedish religious holidays last three days, starting with the afton celebrated the day before the holiday, then the dag, which is the actual day of the holiday, then annandag, the day after the holiday.

Some examples of these are Christmas (jul), Easter (påsk) and Pentecost (pingst), where annandag refers to Boxing Day, Easter Monday and Whit Monday, respectively.

Annandag itself is a compound word consisting of two words: annan and dag. Let’s look at annan first.

Annan comes from the Old Swedish word annar, meaning “second”, “other” or “one of two”. In the accusative case, this became annan, which has hung on in modern Swedish. (For the purposes of this article I’ll be skipping the explanation of Old Swedish grammar, but the grammatically-inclined can read more on the accusative case here.)

It can be complicated to translate into English, and the fact that the word can appear as annat, andre or andra, too, depending on the object it refers to, doesn’t make this easier. 

Here are a few ways it can be translated: 

Vill du ha någonting annat? (Would you like something else?)

Jag vill ha en annan tröja (I want a different top)

Har du några andra leksaker? (Do you have any other toys?)

Den andre prinsen heter André (The second prince is called André [you could use andra here, too])

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Dag, meanwhile, comes from the Old Norse dagr via Old Swedish dagher, with the same Proto-West Germanic root as the English word “day”. 

It differs from the word dygn, which refers specifically to a 24-hour period (as an aside, there is a rarely used word for this in English, too, nychthemeron, from an Ancient Greek term meaning “lasting a day and a night”). 

As far as annandag is concerned, the annan here means “second”, so it literally translates to the second day of whatever holiday it’s referring to.

Usually, an annandag will be written alongside the name of its respective holiday, like annandag påsk or annandag pingst. If you see it written alone, it’s probably referring to annandag jul, which is December 26th or Boxing Day.

Although most holidays in Sweden have an afton and a dag, not all of them have annandagar, so you’ll probably raise a few eyebrows if you ask your colleagues about their plans for annandag midsommar. 

We won’t stop you trying to get your friends and family to celebrate you for an extra day on annandag födelse (second birthday), annandag mor (second mothers’ day) or annandag far (second father’s day), though.

Example sentences:

Annandag pingst var allmän helgdag i Sverige fram till 2004

Whit Monday was a public holiday in Sweden until 2004

Vi brukar fira med min pappas familj på annandagen

We usually celebrate with my dad’s family on December 26th

Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it. It is also possible to buy your copy from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Bokus or Adlibris.

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