This is the proverb a Swede mutters with a sigh of contentment on walking back through their own front door after a trip. It means "there's no place like home," and word for word it says "away good but home best." Four words, no verb at all — and yet it turns on a grammatical distinction that English does not even mark: the difference between being somewhere and going somewhere. Get that distinction wrong and the saying collapses. So this short proverb is the perfect place to lock in the location-versus-direction adverbs, the feature behind so many beginner errors in Swedish.
The proverb
Borta bra men hemma bäst.
There's no place like home. (literally: Away [is] good but home [is] best.)
In the wild it is often said only half-finished — the listener supplies the rest:
Det var en härlig resa, men borta bra och hemma bäst.
It was a lovely trip, but there's no place like home. — Swedes quote it freely, sometimes swapping 'men' for 'och'.
Skönt att vara tillbaka. Borta bra, hemma bäst.
Good to be back. There's no place like home. — Trimmed down to its two halves with the 'men' dropped entirely.
A sentence with no verb
Before the individual words, notice what is missing: there is no verb anywhere. A normal modern main clause would need the linking verb är ("is") twice over — Borta är bra men hemma är bäst. The proverb leaves both out and lets the bare phrases stand against each other. This verbless contrast structure, two elliptical halves balanced by men ("but"), is a signature of the proverb genre (see the overview on Reading Swedish Proverbs). The omitted är is understood; you read it in without it being written.
So the skeleton is: [borta — bra] men [hemma — bäst] — "[where you are away — good] but [where you are home — best]." The conjunction men joins two equal halves and, as a coordinating conjunction, disturbs nothing about their internal order.
Word by word
borta — "away" (location)
Borta means "away" in the sense of being away — not at home, somewhere else, but static, a state of location. This is the crucial point. Swedish has a systematic split that English collapses into one word: for several common adverbs there is a location form (answering var? "where [at]?") and a separate direction form (answering vart? "where [to]?"). Borta is the location member of its pair:
| Location (where you ARE — var?) | Direction (where you GO — vart?) |
|---|---|
| borta (away, off somewhere) | bort (away, off — motion) |
| hemma (at home) | hem (home — motion, "homeward") |
| inne (inside) | in (in) |
| ute (outside) | ut (out) |
| uppe (up there) | upp (up) |
The longer, often -e/-a-ending forms (borta, hemma, inne, ute, uppe) are the static location ones; the short forms (bort, hem, in, ut, upp) carry motion. This whole system, and the var? / vart? question words that select between them, is laid out on Place and Direction Adverbs and var vs vart. The proverb describes two states — being away and being home — so it must use the location forms.
Han är borta hela veckan.
He's away all week. — borta = being away (a state). Compare: 'Han åkte bort' = he went away (motion).
bra — "good"
Bra is the everyday adjective/adverb "good, well." It is invariable — it never adds endings — which is part of why it slots so neatly into a compressed proverb. Here it is the predicate of the first half: away is good (perfectly fine, pleasant enough).
men — "but"
Men ("but") is the hinge. It sets up the contrast that the whole proverb depends on: away is good — fine, agreeable — but home is something more. It is a coordinating conjunction, so it links two equal halves without changing any word order inside them.
hemma — "at home" (location)
Hemma means "at home" — again the location form, the state of being home. Its direction partner is hem ("home / homeward," with motion), and confusing the two is one of the most common Swedish mistakes English speakers make, because English uses the one word "home" for both:
Jag är hemma nu, kom förbi när du vill.
I'm home now, drop by whenever. — hemma = at home, a location. You ARE home.
Jag åker hem nu, hej då!
I'm going home now, bye! — hem = homeward, motion. You GO home. The proverb needs 'hemma', not 'hem'.
bäst — "best," the irregular superlative of bra
The final word, bäst ("best"), is the superlative of bra ("good") — and it is irregular. Bra does not form its degrees by adding the usual endings; it borrows a completely different stem, exactly as English "good / better / best" does:
| Positive | Comparative | Superlative |
|---|---|---|
| bra (good) | bättre (better) | bäst (best) |
| dålig (bad) | sämre / värre (worse) | sämst / värst (worst) |
| gammal (old) | äldre (older) | äldst (oldest) |
There is no regular braare or brast — those forms simply do not exist; you must memorise bra – bättre – bäst. The full set of these suppletive comparisons is on Irregular Comparison. The proverb uses the superlative to make its point as strongly as possible: away is merely good, but home is the best of all — the top of the scale. Note the spelling: bäst has ä, not a — bäst, not bast.
Den här är bra, den där är bättre, men den här är bäst.
This one is good, that one is better, but this one is best. — the full irregular ladder bra–bättre–bäst in one line.
Common Mistakes
❌ Borta bra men hem bäst.
Incorrect — 'hem' is the direction form (motion, 'homeward'). A state of being home needs the location form 'hemma'.
✅ Borta bra men hemma bäst.
There's no place like home — location form 'hemma'.
❌ Bort bra men hemma bäst.
Incorrect — 'bort' is motion ('off, away to'). Being away is the location form 'borta'.
✅ Borta bra men hemma bäst.
Location form 'borta' for the state of being away.
❌ Borta bra men hemma braast / bra-est.
Incorrect — 'bra' has an irregular superlative. There is no '-ast' form; it's 'bäst'.
✅ Borta bra men hemma bäst.
bra → bäst, suppletive superlative.
❌ Borta är bra men hemma är bäst.
Technically grammatical, but it's no longer the proverb — the saying is verbless. Keep the elliptical form.
✅ Borta bra men hemma bäst.
The verbless contrast is the fixed proverb.
What to notice
- The proverb is verbless: a double ellipsis of är ("[is]"), two bare phrases balanced by men. Spelling out the är twice would make it ordinary prose, not a proverb.
- It hinges on the location adverbs borta (being away) and hemma (being home). Their direction partners bort and hem carry motion and would make the saying ungrammatical — the single hardest thing here for an English speaker, because English has one word "home" for both.
- bra is "good," and its superlative bäst ("best") is irregular — a borrowed stem, like English good/best. No -ast form exists.
- Orthography: borta, hemma, bäst — the ä in bäst is essential.
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Start learning Swedish→Related Topics
- Reading Swedish ProverbsA2 — Swedish proverbs (ordspråk) are tiny fossils of older grammar — they keep verbless clauses, fronted words, and article-less nouns that ordinary modern sentences would never allow. This page explains how to read a proverb grammatically rather than literally, previews three of the most common ones with both their literal and figurative meanings, and routes you to the close-read of each.
- Place vs Direction Adverbs (här/hit, var/vart)A2 — Swedish keeps a distinction English lost: it has separate adverbs for being somewhere (location) and moving toward somewhere (direction). här 'here' vs hit 'to here', var 'where' vs vart 'where to', hemma 'at home' vs hem 'homeward'. The verb's meaning — be vs go — picks the form, and var vs vart is the single most error-prone pair.
- Irregular Comparison and UmlautB1 — The closed set of Swedish adjectives that compare irregularly — suppletive families like bra→bättre→bäst and dålig→sämre→sämst, plus the umlaut group (stor→större→störst, ung→yngre→yngst) where the stem vowel changes and the endings switch to -re/-st.
- var vs vart (and hit/dit/hem)A2 — English 'where' does two jobs at once; Swedish splits them. var asks about a LOCATION (Var är du? 'Where are you?'), vart asks about a DIRECTION of movement (Vart går du? 'Where are you going?'). The same split runs through här/hit, där/dit, and hemma/hem. The choice is driven by the verb: standing/being verbs take the location word, going/moving verbs take the direction word.