Yes, we now have a Swedish course available for you to try out. Any comments and feedback here please 
Note that it’s currently still at Alpha, which means it really hasn’t had much testing at all yet, but if you want to play with it, you’re welcome.
Came on here to say just that! The new update of the app seems to kick me out at random, forcing me to log out and back in again. I just had to do that again just now and pressed “learn” assuming it was still on Italian only to find Aran welcoming me to the Swedish course.
Exciting stuff!
I just got the English prompt “Do you speak really Swedish?” (Bit of a weird word order, okay, probably to match the target language), and the Swedish given was “Pratar du jätte svenska?”
… that’s not correct, is it?
(As far as I understand it, jätte is an intensifier that needs an adjective or an adverb to “latch on” to… jättebra, jättestor, jättefin and so on)
Edit to add: there are also shorter prompts, such as “and really” with the same problem (“och jätte”)
Thanks! I did notice jätte was causing some weird phrases so I tried to do a scan of them… Maybe a few didn’t get deleted correctly 
I will do another scan as soon as I get the chance!
My impression is that there are more than a few left 
(but of course the repetition offers the same phrases over and over)
Up until now this only happened in fragments of phrases, so I thought those were artifacts of improperly cut sentences, but I just got the complete sentence “Did you really want to ask me something” as “Ville du jätte fråga mig något”
Correct would of course be “Ville du verkligen fråga mig något”, but I didn’t see “verkligen” being introduced or used anywhere so far (then again I skipped quite a bit).
This is very reminiscent of the possible sehr / wirkich confusion in the German course, because of the decision to have the English sentences use the more natural “really” when it would be more precise to say “very”, as in the sentence “You speak Swedish really well”, which is given as Du pratar Svenska jättebra.
Hmm, in that case it’s likely that my brain was in “‘really’ as in ‘really good’” - mode when reading the phrases and so they didn’t register as too weird. Switching over to “very” shouldn’t be too much work for both courses as long as it doesn’t affect too many things though, so I’ll see if that’s an easy fix…
I’m going to be catching up with these course fixes once we’ve figured out the short-term Japanese fixes, so hopefully in the next couple of weeks.
Ingen ko på isen
It is great to Swedish here on Ssi. I was learning Swedish some time ago using Pimsleur because it was the closest I could find to this method, but I soon grew tired of inappropriately pestering women and boasting about my big American car.
I hope that its ok to flag up things that don’t seem to be right as I find them (and also please correct me if I’m wrong, I only know a small smattering of Swedish).
The word “month” is introduced as “månaden”. This actually means “the month” as definite articles are tacked on to the ends of words in Swedish. “Month” as a stand alone word should be “månad”.
You are correct, but usually the words are introduced depending on the context in which they will be used, and here it is to build the sentence “I started learning last month”, which needs the bestämd form (definite form): Jag började lära mig förra månaden.
Hello, Hendrik!
I’m a native Swede, and I just want to confirm that you’re perfectly correct when you say that “Pratar du jätte svenska” is a bit odd… It’s not just a bit odd - it’s really weird… If someone had used that phrase when chatting to me in Swedish I would’ve thought of it as “Pratar du, jätte, svenska?”, i.e. “Do you, mr giant, speak Swedish?”.
The correct way of saying “Do you really speak Swedish?” in Swedish is “Pratar du verkligen svenska?”.
I can’t think of any situation where you can use “jätte” on its own as an intensifier. Whenever you use it on its own it simply means “giant” (as a noun). Just as you point out you really need to attach another adjective or adverb at the end of it (jättemycket, jättebra, jätteliten, jätteful, jättesäker, …) or sometimes a noun (jättesaker, jätteklippa, jätteplan (a gigantic football field), jättekula, …) - but when attaching a noun it really functions as a size descriptor (not as an intensifier).
I have been using the new app across a few languages now, and in my opinion all the new courses are suffering from a problem which is probably due to the new course creation process. The best thing about the SSiX method is the building-block approach to learning languages, and the Welsh challenges usually offered either complete sentences or parts of phrases that could well be used to build sentences.
Please don’t get me wrong, there are a fair number of complete sentences in the Swedish course, even beasts such as “I can’t remember how to say what I wanted to say” that really keep you on your toes and make you think… This is exactly the material that I want to see, but I feel that the new app often bombards me with seemingly random two- or three-word combinations, and sometimes these combinations make little to no sense.
For example, when “I can’t” is introduced, it could then be combined with a variety of verbs… I can’t speak, I can’t remember, and so on… but instead I get “I can’t really” , “I can’t now”, “I can’t different” and “I can’t many” to name a few.
I know that the Swedish course is in Beta, but in my opinion the list of “phrases” still needs a lot of work to reach the high quality of the hand-curated Welsh material.
I mostly agree with this. I want to partly disagree with one thing below; but I also want to stress that I agree with most of what you say. I think your post is a very valuable one!
The thing I only partly agree on is that I think it depends on the language and how far in you are. The reason I partly disagree is because personally, I genuinely really do need a lot of repetition of these smaller chunks when studying more difficult languages (for various reasons). I sometimes use Audacity to make small chunks like this for myself from Assimil courses. I am so happy that I won’t need to do that with SSi. I don’t want them to change that for these more challenging languages like Chinese and Japanese.
On the other hand (and this is where I absolutely do agree with you!), I am deep into the Italian course and I know exactly how you feel. I don’t need or want so much repetition of these smaller chunks with a language like Italian (except at the very beginning, maybe).
These smaller chunks seem to be much more frequently reviewed since the new update came through. That’s interesting to me, because I think they made these changes in response to their experience with Japanese during the 10-day intensive they were doing. I think that kind of fits with what I’m saying. If I’m right, then they might not have made the same changes after a 10-day German or Spanish intensive.
Regarding making sense, I agree with you. There seem to be 2 different issues here to my mind. There are some chunks you mention that just don’t make much sense, such as “I can’t different.” and “I can’t many”. I often find that these eventually become sentences that make sense later in the course (e.g. “I can’t do anything different.” or “I can’t see many.”). I have a concrete example of this: when I played a little of the Chinese course video on YouTube to a native speaker on Chinese, she immediately said that some fragments (e.g. “doesn’t need to again buy”) were not right as they were missing a grammar word (了). When she got to the whole sentence (“This year, he doesn’t need to buy a TV again.”), it turned out that this full sentence was grammatical without the “了”. The ungrammatical fragments were an artifact of the way the (grammatical) sentence was being built up. Perhaps they could just make the fragments grammatical and trust that learners will figure it out? In my example, that would mean using “了” in the fragments even though it’s not needed in the full sentence. My intuition (which might well be wrong) is that learners could cope with this with the SSi method.
Edit: another example I remember was a lot of practice with the subjunctive form “abbia” in the Italian course, which didn’t make sense in the fragments (“ha” would have been correct, I think), but made perfect sense in the full sentence they were building.
The second (IMO more fixable) problem is with your examples “I can’t really” and “I can’t now”. As you know, these are not only very correct and natural English but actually quite high frequency English often used as complete utterances. Your post got me thinking about this and I can see that they might not be natural (or even correct) in the target language. Maybe I’m naive here, but couldn’t that be solved by generating the sentences in the target language first and then translating them into English rather than vice versa?
Hey there everyone! Thank you very much for your comments I have some time this week to dive into the existing beta courses and get some fixes lined up, so I’m taking notes on all of this to both improve the process for new languages and get these fixed up. I’ll try to reply to as much as possible below
Month - yes, as Hendrik explained we do need to bend the rules a little when it comes to things like this in order to keep the chunks flexible and to minimise the amount of human input (so we can create new languages quickly, so we can then improve them over time rather than get stuck perfecting them!). It’s not always how we might decide to do it if we were crafting the course by hand, but we consider this acceptable. We’re confident that as you keep learning you’ll pick up on the patterns just as well.
Weird phrases - after Japanuary (where Aran, Tom and I learnt Japanese for 10 days straight, very intensely) we encountered quite a few weird phrases like that. We are confident that we’ll learn the language even if you have to say the weird phrases from time to time (they’re kind of a missed opportunity for a good phrase, but they do give you the chance to try to recall the chunks…) but the good news is we think we might have some ideas for improvements to the sentence generation.
Also, as I get your feedback and we can see patterns of words that cause issues (like jätte) I can do a filter of those and get someone to read those phrases.
Smaller chunks vs longer phrases -
you’re both right! We definitely need the smaller chunks, and more of them than there were in the Welsh courses. It’s part of the reason the Welsh courses were so difficult for people, and adding more smaller chunks is one way we can make the courses more accessible to people. However they get a bit annoying later in the course, when it’s both annoying you don’t get a chance to try the longer phrase and you also might get one of the phrases where you need context to know the right “answer” because there are many ways to say it.
We think we have pretty good solutions for both! The idea is to keep the shorter bits as part of the build up to the long phrases, but we can keep a separate set of long phrase variations to call back to when the phrase becomes “old” so that we don’t have to keep getting short chunk promos on stuff that is becoming really familiar
The “more smaller chunks” fix -
It was actually fixing something else, and it was already in the works before we started Japanuary (it was meant to release before it, but was held back due to a possible login issue)… I won’t go into the details, but even with Japanese we found the small chunk repetitions were getting annoying, so it wasn’t just something meant to make it easier for us but it did fix the major issue we needed to fix (that older phrases weren’t being practiced enough), so now we just need to add the “only long old phrases” fix which should improve it
Fragments -
while I agree about learners probably figuring it out, we’ve found that people REALLY don’t like variations like that, and in addition to that it would be very difficult to get the AI to understand what’s an acceptable variation and what’s too far. We think this is an ok middle ground for now. But either way, we’re working on improving all parts of this process!
Translating target language first -
This is what we do with the longer phrases we build up to! But for the shorter phrases, currently neither language is generated first - the phrase pairs are generated at once with instructions to prioritise target language accuracy. However creating the smaller practice chunks is quite a lot more complicated, because there are so many restrictions the phrases have to comply with to be valid, so they’re more volatile and result in some weirder stuff… We do have improvement ideas but will have to test these…
Thank you for the detailed reply.
I really like your fix of having a separate list of the long sentences. That sounds amazing and I can’t wait!
Regarding the compromise, what you say makes sense to me. I can just imagine all the forum posts complaining and asking what the hell this “了” is in the build up ha ha. FWIW my experience so far bears you out. For quite a while during the Italian course, I was panicking about getting so much practice of “abbia” in fragments that did not contain anything to trigger the subjunctive. To my surprise, my brain seemed to recognise what was happening and I didn’t (as I feared) start to produce “abbia” in inappropriate places and all the practice actually helped me not to forget to use it where it was needed (No small thing! It used to drive me crazy when I was learning Spanish and I would say something when I knew a subjunctive was needed but my brain would somehow supply an indicative anyway, forcing me to correct myself).
I don’t know how generalizable that experience is, but FWIW my experience so far seems to bear you out.
I ran through the first 90 minutes of the Swedish course last night.
The long phrases are really good, and they’re always correct.
Some of the short phrases are good as well (and also introduce the learners to the general Swedish V2 rule which causes the subject to come AFTER the verb when the phrase start with a word like “now”, so that you get “jag pratar” but “now pratar jag”). Chunks like those ones are brilliant!
Some of the other short phrases are quite iffy…
Then there are a few chunks that are completely wrong (compinations that can’t ever be used like that, and thus quite useless learning):
And then there’s this “jätte” (which we’ve already discussed)… This far I’ve had:
As a native Swede I also found the short phrases containing “stop” and “that” a bit odd, because I wanted to use other Swedish words when translating them in those short chunks.
I’ll keep noting odd things as I progress through the course.
Amazing to hear this from someone else as well! We do still want to fix these issues, but it’s so good to know the beta courses already work Having had the experience of getting a feel of what’s right and what’s wrong in the course (confirmed though looking it up later - I’m not still going based on feeling ;)) even in Japanese, a language so new to me, I’m pretty confident people will see the patterns when the occasional weird sentence comes in…
Thank you so much for your comments @martin-kahnberg - I think I got some of these through @Deborah-SSi earlier today, but it’s great to have all this in this list form as well.
Uhm… Sorry about all the “jag vill med dig”! I wasn’t expecting this kind of situation as AI is extremely difficult to get to talk about anything sexual or violent (and this is true for all the languages I speak - we’ve even had some issues getting it to generate phrases on fighting, in the argument sense). But it seems I made it so confused with all the restrictions that it forgot…
I did give a filtered-down list of phrases to a Swedish-speaking friend to have a quick read though, but it seems those didn’t make it to the filtered list. Perhaps the list-making AI didn’t list them because it thought it wasn’t allowed to say them. 
anyway, will be removing those ASAP, thank you! Now I know I have something else to scan for with all new languages…
As for the useless chunks - thank you very much for pointing them out! I’ll present these to Aran and we’ll see whether he thinks any of them should be kept for methodology reasons, but we’ll be removing a bunch of these for a later version. They’re a lot less worrying to us - people aren’t likely to go around wanting to say “I want Swedish” and “if do you speak”, so it’s mostly acting as an opportunity to try to remember the chunks of “I want” and “Swedish”, etc, in a shorter amount of time. As we talked about above with @martin-harte you do get a feeling of how phrases actually connect from the longer phrases (there should be more variations of the longer phrases, really, but we’re working on it!)
As for the “that” and “stop” type of thing - yeah, I get your frustration! We do still think that the explanations aren’t that useful in the end, but we’re open to adding explanations if we find out a place where it really is needed. You don’t learn the alternative forms any easier through a quick mention than if you were to just Google it, so we think letting people discover the patterns through just carrying on with the course and getting used to the variations, or getting into conversations and discovering these things themselves is more valuable.
Please keep pointing stuff out if you feel like going through the course some more! This is hugely useful and I’m extremely grateful - my school Swedish only gets me so far…
I don’t have much use for that kind of language at my age sadly. Where was SSi Swedish 25 years ago when I needed you? 
Thanks for the reply, Kai!
Yes, Deborah is usually quite quick… Did she give you the Welsh version of the list?
Yes, the “Jag vill med dig” phrases seem innocent enough (that might be why they’re actually used in the sexual sense)… The key point is that everything else requires an extra verb in Swedish (e.g. “Jag vill prata med dig”, “Jag vill göra det med dig”, “jag vill åka till stan med dig”, “jag vill gå med dig”), so the phrase “Jag vill med dig” (which in itself didn’t mean anything at all) started being used to avoid saying the taboo words aloud.
I like chunks, but I don’t see the point of learning chunks that can’t ever be used. Sometimes it’s worth adding another word to a chunk to get a chunk that can be included in phrases at will. Swedish is less chunky-friendly than Welsh, but still there are chunks that both make sense and are frequently used. The key point here is that the useful Swedish chunks might be a bit more complicated in English…
If I remember correctly from the Welsh course the explanations generally say that “you might encounter other ways of saying this, but we’ll stick to using this version”. I guess something like that would work for Swedish as well. Perhaps there could be some kind of course notes available on the website, where stuff like “that” and “stop” could be briefly explained (instead of pushed into the spoken part).
Yes, I’ll keep going through the whole beta course. The Welsh course helped me quite a bit (and Deborah helped quite a bit as well), so in a way this is my way to lend a helping hand in the other direction. Swedish isn’t an easy language to learn (Welsh is far easier!), so if someone wants to learn I’m always happy to help (just like the Welsh have been willing to give me a helping hand in learning their language).
I’ve done a bit longer now (stopped when I received a with strip for my orange belt), so here are the comments for that section.
“To learn” (“Lära dig”):
“To learn” (“Lära mig”):
“Learn” (“Lära mig”): I’m combining these three, because they really address the same thing. “To learn” is “Lära sig”, and then you simply need to learn that the “sig” part will change according to the person learning. No use giving grammar rules (even though this really is one of a handful Swedish grammar rules that actually work flawlessly), as this shift is learnt through exposure and repetition (just like the V2 rule is learnt through the “now…” examples and the questions). Thus instead of first explaining that “to learn” is “lära dig” (which suddenly changes to “lär dig” without explanation) and a few minute later change that and say that “to learn” is “lära mig” only to change it again a few minutes later and claim that “learn” (on its own) is “lära mig” it would be more useful to simply teach that “to learn” is “lära sig” and teach the mig/dig/sig/oss/er changes through examples and repetition. Learners might get quite frustrated when they get the prompt “to learn” and say “lära mig” only to be told that the correct answer was “lära dig” when both versions are actually equally correct (but “lära sig” is the base form of “to learn”).
“Learn more” (“Lära mig mer”): Well, technically this is correct - but so is “Lära dig mer”. The best answer to “Learn more” is “Lära sig mer”, as no person is specified (and thus “Lära sig mer” is the best answer).
“Learn soon” (“Lära mig snart”): Nothing really wrong, except that learners might be frustrated when the find that “Lära dig snart” wasn’t correct (when really it is equally correct). “Lära sig snart” is the better answer here.
“Trying to learn” (“Försöker lära mig”): Two things here. The first is that it ought to be “Försöker lära sig” as no person is specified. Either change it to “sig” or add the person to the chunk (e.g. “Jag försöker lära mig”, “Du försöker lära dig”, “Han försöker lära sig”, “Hon försöker lära sig”, “Hen försöker lära sig”, “Den försöker lära sig”, “Det försöker lära sig”). The second thing is that there are two ways of saying this in Swedish - “Försöker lära sig” and “Försöker att lära sig”. If you ask someone 60 years or older the version without “att” is incorrect. I’m not sure if there really are moments when the “att” version has to be used (Westcoast Swedish tend to drop “att” in similar phrases), but perhaps the “att” version makes it easier to explain why it is “försöker genomgå prövningen” instead of “försöker gå genom prövningen”. I’m not sure the SSi course will ever get to such examples though…
“Learning quickly” (“Lär dig snabbt”): Again the answer here ought to be “Lär sig snabbt”, as no person is specified. I actually answered “Lära sig snabbt” when I got this prompt, because that’s the obvious correct version for any native Swede. “Lär dig snabbt” sounds like an imperative (“Lär dig snabbt!!!”), i.e. more like “Learn quickly!”. The obvious way around this is to add the person to the chunk, e.g. “You’re learning quickly” (“Du lär dig snabbt”).
“Because” (“För”): This is actually incorrect. “Because” is “För att” or “På grund av att” - “For” is “För”.
“Because really” (“För jätte”): … … … (insert swear words) … … This silly giant again… “För jätte” means “For a giant”, and as far att I know “For a giant” isn’t the same as “Because really”…
“Because now” (“För nu”): This is incorrect. The Swedish “För nu” is a direct translation (incorrect, really) of “For now”/“For the moment”, and in Stockholm this is used as a way of saying “För tillfället”. I’m not sure if this construction is spreading, but in the west people still say “För tillfället” instead of “För nu”. The best way of translating “Because now” is “Eftersom nu” - but because “Eftersom” starts a subclause the “nu” will move to the end, e.g. “Because now I’m tired” = “Eftersom jag är trött nu”. So given that the “För nu” translation is incorrect and the “Eftersom … nu” construction splits whenever it occurs this is a pretty useless chunk to include in the course. Chunks are good, but why learn a chunk as a chunk if it can never be used as a chunk?
“Because I’m trying to learn Swedish” (“För jag försöker lära mig svenska”): A good chunk - but this shortened form will cause problems (see next example). It’s not really incorrect - but it would be wiser to learn this as “För att jag försöker lära mig svenska”. That way it would be consistent with “Because” as “För att”, and it would avoid all kinds of future problems. “För att jag försöker lära mig svenska” is as correct as “För jag försöker lära mig svenska”, and in some people view actually more correct.
“And because I’m trying to learn Swedish” (“Och för jag försöker lära mig svenska”): This is very incorrect. It doesn’t even sound Swedish. Here the “att” is important, and thus the answer has to be “Och för att jag försöker lära mig svenska” (or possibly “Och eftersom jag försöker lära mig svenska”, which is equally correct).
“But because I’m trying to learn Swedish” (“Men för jag försöker lära mig svenska”): This is very incorrect - and even worse than the “And…” version! Here the “att” is important, and thus the answer has to be “Men för att jag försöker lära mig svenska” (or even better “Men eftersom jag försöker lära mig svenska”, which is actually more correct as “men” and “för” sound weird next to each other).
“I’m going to” (“Jag ska”): This one is tricky… I know what you’re trying to do and I see the point of doing so - but the chunk “I’m going to” really means “Jag går till” in Swedish. I would say that teaching the chunk “I’m going to go” (“Jag ska gå”) is better, because it shows the “going to” as “ska” without giving rise to any possible variations.
“But I’m going to learn” (“Men jag ska lära mig”): No problem with the “learn” as “lära mig” here, as the subject is present. The problem here is that the English phrase really is “Men jag går för att lära mig” (i.e. physically walking somewhere in order to learn) in Swedish… This might be something for the notes section on the website, as it might not be a problem for a native English speaker (but it might be for a Dutch person learning Swedish through the medium of English).
“I’m going to more” (“Jag ska mer”): Honestly - what is this??? I’m struggling to get the English phrase, and the Swedish phrase is simply nuts. I know that teenage girls in Stockholm might say thing like “Jag ska mer sväva fram”, but this is Stockholm slang and nothing else. If this is the kind of Swedish you’re trying to teach, well then the course ought to be named “Stockholm slang” and not Swedish. Expressions like this partly give rise to people along the Westcoast of Sweden saying that “I don’t understand what people from Stockholm are trying to say” - because, really we don’t. This is just as weird as the “giant” chunks.
“More soon” (“Mer snart”): This is an awkward one. When I first heard the English chunk my thoughts were “But don’t you say “sooner” in English???”. Then I was given the Swedish version, and I jumped again - because you can’t compare “snart” in Swedish because it’s an adverb (not an adjective). The adjective is “snar” (“snarare”, “snarast”)… But you’re not trying to compare “soon”, are you? I guess this is supposed to be a chunk of the next one…
“I’m going to learn more soon” (“Jag ska lära mig mer snart”): So, I see the reason for the “more soon” chunk - but there is a problem, and the problem is that “Jag ska lära mig mer snart” isn’t nearly as frequently used as “Jag ska snart lära mig mer”… The simple reason is that “mer” and “snart” avoid each other, so that they tend to split if they occur in the same clause… Another alternative version is “Snart ska jag lära mig mer”. (Along the Westcoast you might also encounter “Mer ska jag snart lära mig”… )
“You will” (“Du kommer”):
“You will to” (“Du kommer att”):
“You will” (“Du kommer att”): Talk about complicating things in the extreme!!! “Du kommer att” is the only way to translate “You will”, so please just remove the other two. They just make things far worse than necessary.
“To” (“Att”): No way! “To” means “till”. Period.
“But to” (“Men att”): Ok, I see the point of this one - but when chunked that short it doesn’t work. “But to” only translates as “Men till” - you need to add a verb after “to” in order to change “to” to “att” in Swedish. “But to go” is “Men att gå”, “But to work” is “Men att jobba” - but “But to” is “Men till”, and that’s it. Swedish “att” has no meaning on its own - it’s a particle of a base form verb or part of a subclause constructor.
“And to” (“Och att”): Again, just like the previous one this one needs a verb to become “att”. “And to” means “Och till” when chunked off on its own. Add the base form verb and the chunk will work - but the way it is it’s nonsense. Chunk it up with “the woods” and you would get the Swedish “Och att skogen” - which makes sense, but means “And that the forest…” (e.g. “Och att skogen är döende” - “And that the forest is dying”).
“Now to” (“Nu att”): As far as I know English “Now to” can never correspond to Swedish “Nu att”… “Now to” can be “Nu för att”, but generally it’s “Nu till”. You’re trying to teach learners the meaning of the chunks, so if you want to keep this chunk in the course you really need to make sure that the meaning of the chunk is correct. What good is teaching if you’re only teaching rubbish?
“And remember” (“Och komma ihåg”): This one isn’t really wrong - but the natural way of translating “And remember” is “Och kom ihåg”. 99% of the times you would say “And remember” in English the Swedish version you’d want is “Och kom ihåg” - not “Och komma ihåg”. If you need “Och komma ihåg” in Swedish you generally need “And to remember” in English.
“But remember” (“Men komma ihåg”): Just like the previous one the natural translation is “Men kom ihåg”. If you need “Men komma ihåg” in Swedish you generally need “But to remember” in English.
“You will now” (“Du kommer att nu”): Errr… No. Not. Never. This has to be “Du kommer nu att” in Swedish. Just don’t ask me why, because this is a part of Swedish grammar that isn’t even explained in the university courses in Swedish grammar… I think it’s due to repeated “att”, as you generally add a base form word after this chunk, e.g. “Du kommer att nu att få” → “Du kommer nu att få”. There are examples of “Du kommer att nu få” in older Swedish, but that would be like Chauser English - a construction that hasn’t been used the last 200 years and likely much longer than that. Really - the examples of that old construction are old enough to include personal verb endings as well, so the example would be “Kommet tu nu att få”. Simply change it, and take my word that the change is needed.
“Will remember” (“Kommer att komma ihåg”): Nothing wrong with this one, except that the male voice has a nice slip and says “Kommer att komma ivehåg”…
“Now will remember” (“Nu kommer att komma ihåg”): No. This is simply incorrect Swedish. I’m trying to think of situations where this chunk might be correct, but I can’t think of any. The Swedish expression is “Kommer nu att komma ihåg”. I’m pretty sure this is V2 related, because you can say “Jag kommer nu att komma ihåg” or “Nu kommer jag att komma ihåg” - but never “Jag nu kommer att komma ihåg”. The V2 is already included in the course, and the learners have already noticed that “now” causes weird things to happen - so this will just be another example in that row of oddities linked to “now”.
“Now remember” (“Nu komma ihåg”): This one’s tricky. “Nu komma ihåg” is a possible Swedish phrase, but on its own it’s linked to “Now to remember” in English. “Now remember” is “Kom nu ihåg” in Swedish when used on its own. If you would use it in a phrase like “Now will you remember?” in English the Swedish phrase would be “Kommer du nu komma ihåg?” - but in that case the English chunk has changed. “Now you will remember” is “Nu kommer du (att) komma ihåg” in Swedish, so in that case both the Swedish and English chunks have changed. If you want to keep this chunk in the course, you really need to change the Swedish version to “Kom nu ihåg”.
“Remember easily” (“Komma ihåg lätt”): This might not be exactly incorrect - but it’s very unusual. The normal way of saying it is “Lätt komma ihåg”, e.g. “Det skulle jag lätt komma ihåg” (I would remember that easily) or “Jag skulle lätt komma ihåg det” (I would remember that easily).
“You will remember easily” (“Du kommer att komma ihåg lätt”): This is extremely unusual. The usual way to say this in Swedish is “Du kommer lätt att komma ihåg” or possibly “Du kommer lätt komma ihåg”. Perhaps these two phrases are more easily remembered if you use “Easily remember” instead of “remember easily”.
“You will remember easily now” (“Du kommer att komma ihåg lätt nu”): Never. That Swedish chunk even trips me, as a native Swede… The Swedish chunk has to be “Du kommer lätt att komma ihåg nu” or “Du kommer nu att komma ihåg lätt” - or even “Nu kommer du lätt att komma ihåg”, which is by far the most common way of saying this in Swedish. In older texts you could find “Du kommer nu lätt komma ihåg”, but I’m not even sure that my 20 year old nephew would understand me if I said that to him (and he had top grades in Swedish).
“I really wanted” (“Jag ville jätte”): … … … !!! … … (words of frustration) … … … The giant again??? “I really wanted” is “Jag ville verkligen” in Swedish - nothing else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a chunk or not - whenever you have “I really wanted” in English you will get “Jag ville verkligen” in Swedish (so this is a proper chunk - but please use the correct corresponding Swedish chunk).
“Now easily” (“Nu lätt”): This is a pretty useless chunk to learn, as “nu” and “lätt” never can occur next to each other in modern Swedish - at least not in any way that would correspond to “now easily” in English. “Det här är nu lätt som en plätt.” is a proper Swedish phrase that you would hear any child use - but the corresponding English translation is “This is now easy peasy” (so “easy”, not “easily”). “Lätt” is both an adjective and an adverb in Swedish - just to complicate things… “Lätt” also corresponds to English “light” (as of weight) and “simple” (e.g. “en lätt uppgift” (a simple task)), so it’s easy to get incorrectly generated translations whenever the Swedish word “lätt” is in the mix.
“You” (“Dig”): For two hours the learners have used “dig” in their Swedish phrases without any explanation. Now Aran offers an explanation - and gives one that is so simplified that it’s incorrect. “You” normally translates to “Du” in Swedish - but it can translate to “Dig” as well. On its own “You” generally translates to “Du”, so it would be better to introduce this as a longer chunk if you don’t want to dig into dative grammar.
“I wanted you” (“Jag ville dig”): No. I can see what you want to do, but “I wanted you” is “Jag ville ha dig” in Swedish. Sorry.
“Learn now” (“Lära mig nu”): Why only “mig”? Why not “dig”, which was the way “learn” was first introduced? This must be very frustrating for learners. “Learn now” is “Lära sig nu”, and that’s the only proper version without adding a subject to the chunk. Either change the Swedish to “Lära sig nu” or change the English to “I want to learn now” (“Jag vill lära mig nu”). It’s also possible to go for English “I learn now”, which is “Jag lär mig nu” in Swedish. Just don’t leave this the way it is, please.
“I really wanted to ask you something” (“Jag ville jätte fråga dig något”): … … … … … … !!! !!! !!! (inarticulated words of frustration) … … … … … Where is this giant? I want to kill him! If you want this Swedish phrase, you need to change the English phrase into “I wanted, mr giant, to ask you something” - because that’s the only thing the Swedish phrase can ever mean. If you want a Swedish translation to “I really wanted to ask you something”, the only translation you’ll ever get is “Jag ville verkligen fråga dig något”. Sure - “jättesnabbt” is a common word in Swedish, but “really quickly” can be translated as “verkligen snabbt” as well (equally correct). “Jättebra” is a common word, but I would say that it’s really a translation of “very good”. “Verkligen bra” is really a better translation of “really well” - and by changing all the “really” thingies to “verkligen” you would save yourselves loads of trouble. This far all the “jätte” chunks would work if you changed “jätte” for “verkligen” (and I guess I made a mistake when posting my previous post when I wrote “Do you really Swedish”, as I wrote “Do you speak really Swedish” in the email to Deborah).
More to come, I guess - but this is all up to the white stripe on the orange band.
Next bunch…
Or rather - starting with an additional comment to the last post…
Now to the comments on the next two hours or so of the course.
“You wanted with” (“Du ville med”): This is incorrect. Sure - “Du ville med” is a correct Swedish phrase, but it means “You wanted to join” or “You wanted to come along”.
“But me now” (“Men mig nu”): This is also incorrect. There’s no way to combine the Swedish words that way. “But me now” is “Men jag då” in Swedish. English “me” is “mig” when used as an object - but in subject, complementary and elipsis positions English “me” is “jag” in Swedish.
“You wanted me” (“Du ville mig”): Well - in theory the Swedish chunk is ok. It IS possible to use the three words in that order with that meaning - but I don’t think you’ll ever year anyone say it. When using “You wanted me” in English you generally add “to” after it - and if you do the normal Swedish way of saying the same thing is “Du ville att jag skulle” (e.g. “You wanted me to go” - “Du ville att jag skulle gå”). The English “You wanted me” chunk on its own is “Du ville ha mig” in Swedish. (Yes - the Swedish expression “Du ville mig något” (You wanted to ask me something) might still be used in the east as a set expression, but in the west the same expression is “Du undrade något” (You had a question).)
“With now” (“Med nu”): Ok, this is tricky to explain… The two Swedish words might exist next to each other - but if you find them next to each other the “med” word isn’t the preposition “med” (with), it is the verb particle “med”. Swedish has something called “losely connected verbs”, e.g. “medfölja” (to come along) and “medgå” (to agree). These verbs tend to split, so that you get “jag följer med” and “jag går med på”. Thus the English phrase “I’m coming along now” is “Jag följer med nu” in Swedish (so there you have “med nu” next to each other - but you didn’t have “with” in the English phrase because the Swedish “med” isn’t the preposition “med”). Children learn the splitting operation very early, and many don’t even know that these words are supposed to be connected so nowadays you might find “följa med” and “gå med” in split forms when they would’ve been connected 50 or 100 years ago - but the connected form is the reason Swedish have nouns like “medgång” and “medföljare” (not “gång med” and “följa medare”).
"Because you wanted " (“För du ville”): Again, this is a phrase which actually sounds very odd. You really need the “att” here - “För att du ville”.
“Because you wanted to speak with me” (“För du ville prata med mig”): This really has to be “För att du ville prata med mig”.
“Did you really want” (“Ville du jätte”): … … … Not saying anymore to this giant. I just want him killed. But it’s interesting that the male voice wants to talk to a jet(plane) instead of a giant…
“Did you want now” (“Ville du nu”): Iffy, iffy… “Did you want to have sex now?”
“How long now” (“Hur länge nu”): Ok, this is a very common English expression. It’s so common that some Swedes have imported it into Swedish as “Hur länge nu”, because they’re too lazy to say “För hur lång tid då?” or “Hur länge då då?”. “Hur länge nu” really sounds odd, but I know that some say it.
“You learn really quickly” (“Du lär dig jätte snabbt”): So here’s the giant again. “Jättesnabbt” is ONE word in Swedish, otherwise you’re talking about a quick giant.
“Been learning” (“Lärt dig”): Again - without a person the Swedish version has to be “Lärt sig”.
“Have you been learning now” (“Har du lärt dig nu”): Well - this is actually incorrect. The Swedish “Har du lärt dig nu?” is “Have you learnt (it) now?” in English. “Have you been learning now?” is usually “Har du försökt lära dig nu?” in Swedish.
“Last” (“Förra”): Well… “Last” on its own means “sist”. There has to be a noun following “last” in order to make it “förra”.
“And last” (“Och förra”): (see above)
“But last” (“Men förra”): (see above)
“I started last” (“Jag började förra”): Well, no. As a stand-alone chunk this means “Jag startade sist”. You need to have a noun after “last” in order to convert the chunk into “Jag började förra xxx”.
“And month” (“Och månaden”): Actually, this has to be incorrect. “Och månaden” can occur, but it never translates to “And month” in English. “And month” can never be anything else than “Och månad” (and I’m not even able to figure out a phrase where “och månad” actually occurs, as it’s usually “och en månad”).
“I started month” (“Jag började månaden”): No. This is incorrect. If you have the Swedish chunk “Jag började månaden” it will go on something like “… med att vara sjuk” (by being sick) - and I’m pretty sure you all agree that “I started month by being sick” sounds a bit odd in English. “Jag började månaden” is always “I started the month”.
“Learned” (“Lärt mig”): Ok, so you’re trying to teach me that you have taught me everything i know? “Du har lärt mig” is “You have taught me”. “Han har lärt mig” is “He has taught me”. “Learned” on its own is “Lärt sig”.
“Now last” (“Nu förra”): Well, I see what you’re trying to do - but please add the nouns to the chunk. “Nu förra xxx” makes sense in Swedish - “Nu förra” doesn’t.
“For” (“I”): No. English “for” is “för” in general. Swedish “i” is “in”. There are a few expressions when English complicates things but learning that “for” is “i” in Swedish is simply wrong and will cause loads of trouble later on. It’s much better to learn that “for a year” is “i ett år” and “for a month” is “i en månad”.
“I have learned for” (“Jag har lärt mig i”): Again, this is incorrect. “Jag har lärt mig i” is “I have learnt in”, e.g. “Jag har lärt mig i skolan” - I have learnt in school.
“About” (“ungefär”): Well, that’s one of the meanings of “about” but not the most common one. In general “about” means “om” in Swedish. “About” can also be “omkring”, “runt”, “cirka” and “typ”. The Swedish word “ungefär” means “aproximately”.
“You will to” (“Du kommer att”): Just remove this chunk. When only listning to Aran’s voice I thought he said “You will too” (“Du kommer också att”). I had to read the written version to understand - and the Swedish “Du kommer att” is “You will” in English, never “You will to”. You can very seldom translate a language word by word into another language - so why try adding English words that make no sense in order to make it look like English can be translated word by word into Swedish? I would actually say that Welsh and Swedish can be translated word by word into each other than English and Swedish.
Well, that was the end of this bunch.
I’m not sure if there is more - my course simply stopped (with no parting message or new stripe or anything). I’ll see what happens next time I start the app.
Thank you so much for these detailed lists!
Sorry to hear about the app misbehaving - let us know if you have any issues starting it back up again…
oh, and
Yes!