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LEARNING SWEDISH

Nine unique words you need to date in Sweden

Here are nine unique (and often untranslatable) Swedish words you should know about before you start dating in Sweden.

Published: 18 August 2015 14:56 CEST
Updated: 8 February 2024 15:37 CET
two people in bed, only their feet are showing under the covers
There's a Swedish word for the hairstyle these two people are likely to sport later. Photo: Isabell Höjman/TT

1. Fika

As you probably know, fika is a Swedish word for a coffee and cake break. You can have a fika with a friend, a relative or a colleague. You can also get asked to go for a fika by someone who fancies you, or someone you’ve already slept with (but perhaps barely spoken to). If the whole thing sounds confusing – it is. But if you’re confident you are being hit on, the word for this is ragga.

FOR MEMBERS: So… when is a fika a fika and when is it a date?

2. Mambo 

Once you’re pretty sure the person you’re drinking coffee and/or sleeping with likes you in a more romantic way, it might be time to check out their living situation.

As well as finding out whether or not they’re married (gift), consider also investigating if they are a mambo – the word for someone who lives at home with their mother. It rhymes with sambo, the word for a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend. That’s probably a no-no as well, but we’ll let you be the judge. Given the difficulties of finding an apartment in Sweden’s major cities, you should be aware of broken-up sambos who are temporarily still flat-sharing.

READ ALSO: How to find out if your Swedish date is married

3. Bonusbarn

If your new partner isn’t married, cheating or still stuck in their parents’ nest and they’re over 30, there’s a good chance they might be divorced (frånskild). Thanks to Swedish gender equality, any children involved usually spend alternate weeks with each parent, which means you could quickly end up spending a lot of time with them too. The word for children in Swedish is barn and the word for stepchildren is bonusbarn, putting a delightfully positive spin on preparing to spend Valentine’s Day with little Jonas or Jessica alongside your new lover.

4. Nota

This is the word for a receipt or bill in Sweden. Worth learning as you will almost always be expected to pay your share of any dinner, drink or fika date.

5. Kyss

It’s good to be aware of the difference between kyss and puss in Swedish. The former is more passionate and is pronounced something like “shiss”; the latter is more of a peck and far more innocent than it sounds in English. Puss is often put on the end of text messages sent between (usually female) friends. So you needn’t worry that your colleague is either trying to get intimate with you or commenting on that spot on your chin. By the way kiss is the Swedish word for, well, pee, so be careful how you use that one too.

6. Mysa

A bit like the English word “snuggle”, you’ll hopefully be doing plenty of this with your new squeeze if you’ve managed to navigate your way through all the fikas and the bonusbarn. But don’t jump to conclusions if your partner mentions mysa when talking about how they spent their afternoon while you were at the supermarket. You can mysa on your own at home by the fire or in a warm pub. It’s a bit like the Danish word “hygge”, roughly translated as “cosiness”.

7. Systembolaget

The name for Sweden’s state-run alcohol store empire. It shuts at 7pm on weekdays in big cities and at 3pm on Saturdays. It is not open on Sundays. Swedes can be shy and socially awkward, so if you’re staying in rather than going out with your new lover, you might also want to stock up on some wine ahead of the weekend.

8. Knullrufs

Well done, your relationship is blooming and you’re having a great time in the bedroom. Knullrufs is a unique Swedish word for messy “bed hair” after a roll in the hay. The first half of the word is considered slightly offensive, so best avoid using this one in front of your future in-laws (svärföräldrar).

READ ALSO: Why knullrufs is a much better word than both fika and lagom

9. Orka

This is a very common verb in Swedish meaning “to have the energy”. So when your partner says “jag orkar inte” in the bedroom, it means they’d rather catch up on sleep. This is of course fair enough, but if it starts happening regularly, it could mean you’re on the road to splitting up (separera) or skilsmässa (that divorce we mentioned earlier) and having to start all over again with that first awkward fika.

This article was written by Maddy Savage in 2015 and updated in 2023.

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For members

LEARNING SWEDISH

How positive are Swedes towards foreign accents?

Swedes respond most positively to people speaking Swedish with English, Finnish and German accents, according to a new study from Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore.

Published: 2 May 2024 15:29 CEST
How positive are Swedes towards foreign accents?

The study asked Swedes to identify the accents of twelve different people speaking Swedish, before rating the speakers on their trustworthiness, friendliness, ambition, confidence, appeal and whether they were ordentlig, a Swedish word which describes something similar to being “proper” or an upstanding citizen. 

These qualities were then ranked from one (not at all) to six (a lot), before being combined into a total score for each speaker.

Respondents were not told if they had guessed the accent of a speaker correctly or incorrectly before ranking them.

Speakers of Swedish with an English accent had the highest score on this scale: 3.86, although this is still low considering that the highest possible score was six. The English speaker spoke British English and has lived in Sweden for 41 years.

Finns came just behind on 3.85, with Germans coming third with a score of 3.79.

These three accents were also considered to be the easiest to understand, no matter how strong or weak the accents were considered to be.

In fourth place with a score of 3.62 was a female speaker with a förortsaccent, which is not an accent at all but rather a dialect of Swedish spoken in the often immigrant-heavy suburbs (förorter) of large cities. Although some aspects of förortssvenska have been influenced by languages spoken by people who have immigrated to these parts of Sweden from abroad, many speakers of förortssvenska were born in Sweden and have lived their entire lives here.

Next up were Somali, Arabic and Turkish accents, with scores of 3.32, 3.29 and 3.24 respectively. Polish, Persian and Spanish accents followed with scores of 3.23, 3.21 and 3.15, with a Bosnian accent the lowest placing foreign accent at 3.06.

The lowest result in the study overall was for a male speaker with a förortsaccent, with a score of just 2.95.

Women ranked more highly than men

Interestingly, female speakers made up four of the top five, although the most positively rated accent (English) was a male speaker. There was also only one woman in the bottom five (the Spanish speaker) suggesting that Swedes are more positive towards women with foreign accents than men.

The respondents were also asked to guess what level of education the speakers had, where they could choose between junior high school or equivalent (grundskola), senior high school or equivalent (gymnasium), post-secondary school education that was not university-level, and university-level studies.

Accents from closer countries scored more highly

As a general rule, Swedes assumed that people from countries which are closer geographically had a higher level of education than those who were from further away. English came top again, followed by German and Finnish, while a male speaker of förortssvenska came last, with the speaker with a Bosnian accent coming second to last.

In general, speakers of the accents which scored highly in terms of positive associations were also assumed to have a higher level of education, and the same can be said for the accents which had the most negative ratings.

There is a caveat, however. The positively-rated accents – English, Finnish and German – were those which speakers were best at identifying. Almost 90 percent of Swedes in the study recognised an Finnish accent, with just under 85 percent recognising an English accent and slightly under 70 percent recognising a German one.

This means that in these cases, respondents were judging these specific accents, and may have been influenced by prior contact with speakers of Swedish from these countries such as friends, coworkers or public figures, or commonly held assumptions about them.

That was also the case for the male förortsaccent, which was the fourth-most recognised accent – just over 40 percent of listeners identified it correctly.

For the other accents, listeners were unsure of their guesses, even those who guessed correctly. Only one in twenty listeners could recognise the Turkish accent, for example.

This means that assumptions made about speakers with less easily identified accents may be due to other factors than their nationality, such as the strength of their accent and their gender.

Indeed, the most common incorrect guess when a listener could not identify an accent was Arabic, often bringing with it negative ratings in the other categories.

Political views also make a difference

The study also looked at whether certain traits or beliefs in the listening Swedes affected how they ranked each speaker.

Men rated each speaker more negatively than the average score given by all listeners, while women rated them more positively.

There were also clear differences when it comes to politics, with right-wing voters more likely to have a negative opinion of foreign accents.

Listeners who identified as Sweden Democrats or Moderates rated almost all accents significantly lower than the average (Sweden Democrats rated English and Finnish roughly the same as average listeners, and Moderates rated German accents roughly the same as the average).

Christian Democrats and Liberals rated the accents similar to the average result for all listeners, while left-bloc voters belonging to the Centre Party, Social Democrats, Green Party and Left Party rated almost all accents significantly higher than the average. 

The groups with the most positive attitude towards people speaking Swedish with an accent were women, the highly educated, voters in the left-wing bloc and, to a lesser extent, older people and people who earn less than 25,000 kronor a month.

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