20 HILARIOUS SWEDISH SAYINGS & IDIOMS 🇸🇪 → 🇺🇸 EXPLAINED
These are my favourite Swedish idioms that will help you learn more about Swedish culture and the Swedish language.
Do you have any similar expressions in your language?
Thank you so much for watching 🌺
00:00 Intro
00:13 One
00:44 Two
00:58 När man talar om trollen
01:25 Tagen på sängen
01:40 Nära skjuter ingen hare
02:02 Balsam för själen
02:24 Tappad bakom en vagn
02:36 Dra mig baklänges
02:54 Het på gröten
03:20 Skita i det blå skåpet
03:31 Pest eller kolera
03:48 I tid och otid
04:06 Is i magen
04:27 Gå in I väggen
04:38 Så in I Norden
04:51 Armbåga sig fram
05:14 Gå åt skogen
05:33 Visa vart skåpet ska stå
06:03 Rent mjöl i påsen
06:32 Skinn på näsan
06:43 Outro
07:26 Bloopers
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I'm from New Zealand working in Sweden and these videos are a great insight into the Swedish people, they are also a lot of fun, please keep it up! Tack så mycket
Oh how fun! :D thanks so much!
Riktigt bra gjort! Väldigt bra förklaringar. En eloge!👍
"Att gå som katten runt het gröt" is the exakt opposite of "vara het på gröten". The cat is walking around it but never gets to it.
Some Dutch/Flemish ones "gaat daarmee naar de oorlog" or "go to war with that one", meaning that someone is everything but bright "alsof er een engeltje op je tong pist" or "it's as if a little angel pees on your tongue", meaning that a drink is really delicious "iets aframmelen" or "to rattle something", meaning that you recite something dutifully and without inspirationt "met zijn voeten spelen" or "to play with his feet", meaning to fool someone (but not playful - most of the time-) we also use the "pest of cholera" one.
Oh thank you! I love the angel one haha, so funny! And cool that you have "pest or cholera"! I use it all the time in English lol
Love that one.
It feels like home to listen to your videos! I'm a Swede now living in the UK for ten years and it makes me smile to hear all these idioms. Some other idioms to add to your list is "fått om bakfoten" and "hellre pissa i stuprännan än stupa i pissrännan". 😂 I found your channel last week and have been binging since! Du visar verkligen var skåpet ska stå in your videos. Keep posting! ❤️
Hahah åh tack så jättemycket ❤️❤️❤️😂
I recently found out in 49% Scandinavian and it makes me so happy watching and hearing about Scandinavia as a whole
Very nice to watch this video. I enjoyed it a lot. I share one phrase from the several that I remembered (Mexico); "They only visit the cactus when it has fruits" - "Al nopal lo van a ver sólo cuando tiene tunas". The sense is that you only do that because you can get a benefit, but the rest of the time (the majority) you don't.
“Clean flour in the bag” is my favorite. Enjoyed the post. You hit a home run.
My favorite is "don't bite the foot that stomps your grapes". It's a version of "don't bite the hand that feeds you". Don't be ungrateful to someone who is taking care of you. I liked "clean in the flour bag". It comes close to "pure as the driven snow", sort of.
*to have clean flour in the bag
Your video opened up such a fantastic international dialogue. So much fun to read the comments from different countries. Thank you for that.😉 segment.
I love your video. My father was a first generation Swedish immigrant child, so I heard tagit på sängen a lot, but he became an English professor and taught Shakespeare. My favorite Shakespearian phrase is "hoisted by his own petard" which comes from the soldiers who would arm a catapult with the crane called a "petard" and would sometimes hook themselves by their own belt and hoist themselves into the air! Hoisted by his own petard! lol
het på gröten och som en katt kring het gröt betyder två olika saker. Den ena är att du är ivrig (och kan göra saker för tidigt) den andra betyder att du drar dig för att göra/konfrontera något/någon (av rädsla för att såra någon t.ex) fast du vet att du måste.
My grandfather once told me "Du e riktic schlaba" (written phonetically) which he said meant "you're a regular slob." He was a little tipsy at the time but we had a great laugh.
Its interesting to hear different cultural sayings! I am totally amazed with your english, I wish I could speak another language a perfectly as you do. Thanks for sharing
I think my favorite Swedish expression is “ingen ko på isen” or “no cow on the ice”, meaning there’s no urgency. I use this all the time, in both languages.
Oj det har jag aldrig hört ens! 😁
Tack så mycket ❤😊
Varsågod!
Thanks! I ‘ m learning Swedish and I enjoyed your video! Tack ska du ha!
Varsågod!
Nära skjuter ingen hare kan man översätta med "close but no ciggar".
Marvelous!
Thank youu👏👏
You're welcome 😊
My favorite: "tål att tänkas på" Translation: "endures to be thought about" Perfect when you're met with a new idea you don't want to conclude then and there. Like if you have a though decision to make that can be postponed, then that decision "endures to be thought about".
”Fara omkring som en osalig ande” kunde varit med som ett uttryck. När någon rör sig nervöst och oplanerat. ”Move around like a spirit, who have not been saved”
Min favvis, som jag också ofta översätter till engelska för glada skratt är " det är ingen ko på isen" 🙄 Tycker också det är härligt att höra din skånska då och då. 🤗
Hahah, jag tycker det är så kul att översätta dem till engelska :D Tack :))
Yeah, there's no cow on the ice. 😅
Thank you so much for your video
Thank you :D
Inget att hänga i julgranen (“Nothing to hang on the Christmas tree) might translate well to the English expression (possibly just American, but I'm not sure), “Nothing to write home about”, which has that same idea of something not being that great, but maybe good enough, if I understand the meaning behind the Swedish phrase well enough. “Hey, I heard the apple pie down at the diner is really good. Have you tried it?” “Yeah. It’s ok, but nothing to write home about.” The idea is, as you probably guess, is that something is good enough that you’d take the time to send a letter back home to tell everyone all about The Thing being discussed.
Oh I'd never heard that one! So good!
Yes, perfect fit.
You make us loooooove Sweden ! For sure ;)
May I make a suggestion for another video? How about making a video about Scandinavian names? You can start with Vigre Bohinen, and then explain the different naming conventions like in AndersSON, Dōttir etc. What are the different Scandinavian ethnicities like Sami or Goth and so on? How about your own? How common is it for a modern day Swede or Norwegian to marry someone from another country? What is the proportion of couples who have children, but are not married? Would you like to have children in your minimalist lifestyle? What is the difference between Pagan and religious holidays in Scandinavia (especially around Christmas time)? Are most Scandinavians today Lutheran and are they religious? Are there any religious political parties? These are just some questions I'd like to hear you talk about. Perhaps others may find them interesting too.
Such a fun video idea! :D I might answer some of these questions in my next Q&A video because they are very interesting.
Oh thats an interesting video. I am learning Swedish for actually no reason, I just gillar språket. And that video is pretty useful to expand my vocabulary. So I found some parallels to German: Nära skuter ingen hare is similar to "Knapp daneben ist auch vorbei" so basically "just off the mark is also a miss" | Balsam för själen is another example being: "Balsam für die Seele" pretty much 1:1 translated ;D Gå åt skogen could be "Ein Schuss in den Ofen" so a 'shot in the furnace' basically meaning that what you did was just a complete fail. And a last one is Visa vart skåpet ska stå. It is "Zeigen wo der Hammer hängt" so 'showing where the hammer hangs' basically but there are quite a lot of variations for this one ;D. Meaning the same of course as you said in the video.
I would say that "het på gröten" is more negatively charged (like "lök på laxen"/"fuel on the fire") and "pang på rödbetan" is more positively charged (like "grädde på moset"/"icing on the cake"). So being on a date with someone that is "pang på rödbetan" is someone you'd most definitely would want to see again! 🙂
Where in Sweden do you live? Norrland? For me "Het på Gröten" is more like one who is a little to eager, keen, impatient, sometimes resulting in some kind of failure, but not all the time. And "Pang på Rödbetan" is someone who goes straight to the point, like doesn't make it a secret that person somehow want to get intimate right away.
In the American south, we have an expression “no skin off my nose” which means something like it wouldn’t bother me. For example “you’re going to be late for i that meeting if you don’t hurry” You could reply “no skin off my nose” if you aren’t worried about it
"To have skin on nose" reminded me on the German expression "To have hairs on the teeth" when someone is tough, straight forward.
Haha ohh, that's funny!
1:42 This reminds me of the “almost” expression in American English. Something like almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. (There may be more to it.) Horseshoes is a game of skill that involves tossing a horseshoe at a pole and trying to get the inner part of the horseshoe to hit the pole and have it twirl around as it descends. (Might want to fact check the actual rules…my family make their own.) Apparently you can still get some points even if it doesn’t work out quite as you might like. And of course, with hand grenades, they, you know, have a sizable radius of destruction, so if you get close, that will be good enough. I think 90% of the time I heard a man say it and the other 10% it was a little boy, so… 🤷♀️
"Close only counts in horseshoes." Meaning one's efforts weren't good enough. A more forgiving expression is "Close enough for jazz."
In Croatia/ Bosnia we also have conditioner for the soul, but it’s more like balm for the soul -melem za dušu. :)
Such a beautiful language!!!
Balsam actually means balm ;)
Im Germany we also have that one here it is „Balsam für die Seele“ which is basically a direct translation from English/ Swedish one
Often when someone seems very intelligent and alert, we say that they are very "sharp"... however, if we speak of someone who is *spectacularly NOT* very smart, we can say something like, "He's about as sharp as a bag of wet mice" - I often say this about myself ahahahaha 😄
Haha! We seem to have a lot of sayings about this! :D Maybe we weren't so smart? lol! I like "not the sharpest knife in the drawer"
@@SagaJohanna ”Han har inte alla hästar hemma” ”He has not all horses at home” is an expression with same meaning.
Not the brightest candle in the box....not the sharpest pencil in the case...not the sharpest tool in the tool shed...these are definitely Americanisms.😊
Another expression, from those of us of Mohawk (Kanienkeha:kha) heritage, we'd say (in English), "His cornbread isn't yet done in the middle" lol
"he's a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock" Aussie equivalent.
Can't stop laughing at 💩 in the blue cupboard 😂 I'm just using that in English lol
Haha :D
Dropped behind the carriage in America is "fell off the turnip truck".😂
Hahaha love it
My native laguage is Austrian German, and we use "Conditioner for the Soul" (Balsam für die Seele) and "deciding between plague and cholera" (zwischen Pest und Cholera entscheiden) too.
Oh I love to hear that! I think it's such a beautiful language written :)
Interesting...in America "you are between a rock and a hard place". Definitely not my favorite expression, but yours reminded me of it.
@@traceymoore291 Another English alternative would be "pick your poison"
👍
we do have the "hare" one in English: "close only counts in horseshoes" (and hand grenades)
Saga, "pang på rödbetan" är inte ett uttryck som bara anspelar på sex. I en vidare bemärkelse kan det också betyda att man inte har övervägt sina handlingar.
Tack! :D
"Fine as Froghair!"
a lot of these seem to relate to the bed room.
Not necessarily, she just gave many examples related to dating.
@@monikagoj5613 who's objective seems to be the bedroom.
My mother, a Swede born in 1919, when asked about the taste of something which is very bland would say "It tastes like sticking your tongue out the window". I, being American, cannot offer the Swedish. The image, however is amusing.
We have the same saying in swedish nowadays, but you add rain. Translates to "(it tastes) like sticking your tounge out the window when it rains" In swedish: "som att sticka ut tungan genom fönstret när det regnar"
One of my favorite expressions in French us: :"donner sa langue au chat". It's to give your tongue to the cat, i.e. you are at a loss for words.
The English equivalent is framed as a question "has the cat got your tongue?"
@@cbjones2212 You got that one, one thumb up. Have you any signal English expressions which might seem weird to a French mind?
Intressant, men visar också lite på dialektala skillnader. Jag som inte är från Skåne eller de södra delarna skulle aldrig säga någonting annat än "Dra åt skogen".
Bang on the beaver might explain it a little bit better. 😜
🤣🤣🤣🤣
At least half of them we also use in Danish ... not so surprisingly. But others I've never heard before ... 8-)))
Vi får komma ihåg att betydelsen av idiom ändras över tid, i olika landsdelar och t o m olika familjer. Alldeles exakta betydelser skiftar alltså. Min favvo är: "Det finns fler än ett sätt att flå en katt!" de SA3BOW
I would be curious to know what your favorite English idioms are, and what the equivalent Swedish translation would be.
Oh clever!
Is i magen i fairly close to stay frosty but not in a military setting.
Holz vor der Hütte haben - She has Wood in front of the hut - German idiom describing a woman with a large chest,
😂😂😂
Now you have planted your last potato Saga! How could you miss the most important one?
Hahha noooo! Such a good one!
Hello, Saga. This was a fun and light-hearted video, that made me smile! I like > (probably due to growing up with J R R Tolkien, The Hobbit in particular ...) and, especially, >!😅 The culture in the UK has become rather too much >, following the US as we do in all things. (I like how flaunting status was really not the Swedish culture - is that still the case? I last visited in 2015, and it was definitely different in a good way to the UK in this respect ... .) As for British expressions that confuse people from other countries: "How do you do." on meeting someone is not a question, but a slightly old-fashioned or formal equivalent of "hello". The right response is also "How do you do.", not "Great, thanks.". If actually asked how you are doing as a question, "Not too bad." is a British response that covers everything from abject despair to being on top of the world. We still practise laconic understatement ... You may find this funny (if YT allows me to post a link): polish2english.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/55551980-anglo-eu-translation-guide1.pdf
Thanks so much Alec! Glad you liked it! I like your incorporation of the expressions haha :D I think we're still quite against flaunting in general, however, with social media and a growing influence from immigrants it is changing. A lot of the second immigrant generation kids come from very different backgrounds, and are pressured by their parents to only pursue "status" careers. How do you do - confused me so much as a young adult. We were taught in school (not sure why, it wasn't that long ago haha), that in England you say "How do you do?" and respond "How do you do?". Moving to Paris at 18 and working with British people, "How do you do?" did not come in handy.... It was rather "Hiya babes" that worked better! :D Oh I will watch it, thank you!
😂bang on the beetroot. I can't wait to use it.
Some of my friends are Swedish somehow i find them different but interesting haha
Ooops. Here's an English one - "gone to the dogs" meaning it's got worse e.g. the cafe has gone to the dogs since the new manager took over. Or "monkey business" meaning getting into trouble e.g. I hope those two little boys don't get up to any monkey business outside in the garden.
Funny how some of them are also used in Finnish even though the languages are totally different.
For seven hundred years Finland Was a part of Sweden. Maybe it is because of that the idioms is the same.
Uffda
Great vid, but English should be marked with the British flag surely ? It is where the English language is from.
”Ont krut förgås inte”, vilket är en felöversättning av tyska ”Unkraut vergeht nicht”, alltså ogräs och inte ont krut. In english: ” Evil gunpowder will not be destroyed” Try to explain this in english..😅
🤣🤣🤣
En variant, en specifik sådan, på "ränderna går aldrig ur"...
"Dra dit pepparn växer" is a bit odd. "Leave/go to where the pepper grows". Assumingly far away I guess. Or does pepper grow in hell perhaps?
att glida in på en räkmacka slide in on a shrimp sandwich to get a position undeservedly
Good oen!
Skita i det blå skåpet, måste vara något skånskt uttryck för jag har aldrig hört det förut🤔
Det tror jag inte, jag har hört det massor med gånger. Har släkt från Sundsvall och bott i Stockholm hela mitt liv.
Är vanligt i Småland
Tummen mitt i handen
Here's an English one -
Why the Us-flag? The language is English, represented by the UK-flag.... 🙄
Most of my viewers are from the us :)
If it English shouldn't it be represented by the English flag?
So annoyed that you used the US flag to denote English language. Forgiven if you don't do it again 🙂
I'm a Swede in Chicago... have no understanding of my heritage. Thanks for the lesson! One thing I've learned... We're Globetrotters! How do you say that one?❤