Modal Verbs: Overview

Modal verbs are the small set of helper verbs that let you talk about ability, permission, obligation, intention, and possibility — Swedish kan, vill, ska, måste, får, bör, lär, må. The good news for an English speaker is that they behave almost exactly like English modals in one crucial way (they take a bare infinitive of the main verb), and like all Swedish verbs they never change for person. The catch is that a few of them carry several unrelated meanings, so the difficulty is rarely the grammar — it is knowing which sense is in play. This page lays out the whole set and its shared rules; the detail pages drill each verb.

The one rule that ties them all together: bare infinitive, no att

A Swedish modal is followed directly by the bare infinitive of the main verb — the dictionary form with no att in front of it. This is the single most important fact on the page, and it matches English perfectly: you say I can swim, not I can to swim, and Swedish says Jag kan simma, not Jag kan att simma.

This is worth stressing because most other Swedish verbs that take a following verb do require att: Jag försöker *att simma ("I'm trying to swim"), Jag hoppas **att komma ("I hope to come"). The modals are precisely the verbs that drop it. So the dividing line you must internalise is: **modal → bare infinitive; ordinary verb + following verb → usually *att + infinitive.

They never agree for person — and they're irregular in the present

Swedish verbs already don't conjugate for person (it's jag talar, du talar, han talar). The modals keep that property and add one twist: their present-tense forms are irregular and invariable. You don't build kan from a regular ending — you simply memorise it, and then it is the same for every subject.

Notice that the present form is the same for all subjects — there is no -s, no plural form, nothing:

The practical upshot is huge: once you know the present form of a modal, you can build any modal sentence with any subject. There is no grid of persons to drill, only the single irregular present to memorise.

måste (and lär) have no everyday infinitive

Two of these are defective — they lack the full set of forms most verbs have. måste is the headline case: in everyday Swedish it has no separate infinitive and no distinct past. The form måste does duty for the present, and for the past most speakers reach for var tvungen att ("was forced/obliged to") or simply leave måste unchanged in context.

The reportive lär ("is said to, apparently") is also defective and quite literary — Han lär vara mycket rik ("He's said to be very rich"). You should recognise it, but you won't need to produce it at A2.

Several modals are heavily polysemous — meaning, not form, is the work

The grammar of these verbs is easy; the semantics are where learners actually struggle. Three modals in particular each cover a fan of English meanings:

• få is the worst offender: Får jag komma in? ("May I come in?", permission), Vi fick se filmen ("We got to see the film", opportunity), Du får vänta lite ("You'll have to wait a bit", mild obligation) — plus a non-modal life as the main verb "get/receive": Jag fick ett brev ("I got a letter").
• ska spans intention/future (Jag ska resa, "I'm going to travel"), obligation/instruction (Du ska vara här klockan åtta, "You're to be here at eight"), and reported intention.
• må ranges from a literary wish (Må de leva länge!, "May they live long!") to the wholly everyday "feel" of health (Hur mår du?, "How are you?").

So when you meet one of these, the question is never "what is the form?" — it is invariant — but "which of its meanings fits here?" The dedicated pages walk through each verb's senses with examples.

Where each verb is drilled

• Ability and knowing: kunna.
• Wanting (and the polite skulle vilja): vilja.
• Necessity and its tricky negation: måste, behöva, tvungen.
• Permission, "get to", and prohibition: få.
• The deontic scale (may / need not / must) across modals: Permission and Obligation.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Swedish modals — kan, vill, ska, måste, får, bör, lär, må — all take a bare infinitive with no att (Jag kan simma), exactly like English modals.
• Ordinary verbs that take a following verb usually do need att (Jag försöker att simma). The modals are the verbs that drop it — that's the dividing line.
• Modal present forms are irregular and invariable: one form per modal, identical for every subject. Learn the present and you can build any modal sentence.
• måste and lär are defective — no everyday infinitive; the past of måste is normally var tvungen att.
• The hard part is meaning, not form: få, ska, and må each carry several senses. Read the per-verb pages for the distinctions.