Breakdown of Han tycker att kön går långsamt, men stolen är så bekväm att han nästan somnar.
Questions & Answers about Han tycker att kön går långsamt, men stolen är så bekväm att han nästan somnar.
In Swedish, tycker is normally followed by att when it introduces a whole clause (a full sentence) expressing an opinion:
- Han tycker att kön går långsamt. – He thinks / feels that the line is moving slowly.
If you remove att here, it can occur in casual speech, but tycker att is the standard written form.
Comparison:
- tycker (att) – opinion or personal evaluation:
Jag tycker att filmen är bra. – I think the movie is good. - tror (att) – belief about facts or reality, often a guess:
Jag tror att han kommer snart. – I believe / think he’ll come soon. - tänker – to be thinking, or to plan/intend:
Jag tänker resa i sommar. – I’m planning to travel this summer.
So Han tycker att … focuses on his opinion that the queue is slow, not on a factual prediction or a plan.
Yes, both att here are conjunctions meaning “that”:
- Han tycker att kön går långsamt – att introduces the content of what he thinks: that the line is moving slowly.
- … stolen är så bekväm att han nästan somnar – att introduces the result: that he almost falls asleep.
Both are the same word grammatically.
This is different from att used as an infinitive marker (att läsa = to read). In this sentence, att is not an infinitive marker at all; it always connects a full clause.
Here kön clearly means “the line / the queue”, because it “goes slowly” (går långsamt). You don’t normally say that a gender goes slowly.
Swedish has two different nouns that happen to overlap in spelling:
- en kö – a queue / line → kön = the queue
- ett kön – a sex / gender → könet = the sex, the gender
So:
- kön (from en kö) = the queue
- könet (from ett kön) = the gender
Same spelling kön can exist in the dictionary, but context (and the rest of the forms) tell you which word it is. Here, because it comes from en kö and is followed by går långsamt, it must be the queue.
Swedish often uses gå (“go”) to talk about how something progresses or moves along:
- Kön går långsamt. – The line is moving slowly.
- Tiden går fort. – Time goes fast.
- Det går bra. – It’s going well.
är långsam describes a more permanent property of the subject (a slow person, a slow machine), and it sounds odd with kö. You’re not saying the queue “is a slow thing” by nature; you’re saying its movement is slow right now.
So kön går långsamt is the natural idiomatic way to say “the line is going slowly” in Swedish.
långsam is the adjective (“slow”), and långsamt is its adverb form (“slowly”).
In Swedish, many adverbs are formed by adding -t to the adjective (often the same form as neuter singular):
- snabb → snabbt (fast → quickly)
- långsam → långsamt (slow → slowly)
After a normal verb like går (“goes”), you usually need an adverb, because you’re describing how he goes / how the queue goes:
- Kön går långsamt. – The line goes slowly.
Using långsam here would sound ungrammatical: it would be like saying “the line goes slow” but in a way Swedish doesn’t accept.
In Swedish subordinate clauses (those introduced by att, om, eftersom, etc.), the basic word order is:
[att] + Subject + (sentence adverb) + Verb + …
So in your examples:
att kön går långsamt
- kön = subject
- går = verb
- långsamt = adverb describing goes
att han nästan somnar
- han = subject
- nästan = sentence adverb (“almost”)
- somnar = verb
Compare with a main clause:
- Han somnar nästan. – Subject + verb + adverb
- att han nästan somnar. – att
- subject + adverb + verb
So you don’t move the verb to second position after att; instead you keep subject–adverb–verb inside the clause.
stolen is the definite form of en stol (“a chair”):
- en stol – a chair
- stolen – the chair
- stolar – chairs
- stolarna – the chairs
Swedish usually marks “the” by a suffix on the noun, not by a separate word:
- en stol → stolen (“the chair”)
- en bok → boken (“the book”)
It has nothing to do with the English word “stolen”. In Swedish, the participle “stolen” (as in “a stolen car”) would be stulen (en stulen bil), not stolen.
Context also helps: in a queue you typically sit in a chair, so stolen är så bekväm can only reasonably mean “the chair is so comfortable”.
The pattern så … att … is a result construction and usually translates as “so … that …”:
- Stolen är så bekväm att han nästan somnar.
– The chair is so comfortable that he almost falls asleep.
It doesn’t just say that the chair is very comfortable; it also tells you the consequence of that comfort.
Compare:
- Stolen är väldigt / mycket bekväm. – The chair is very comfortable.
(No explicit result, just a high degree.) - Stolen är så bekväm att han nästan somnar. – The chair is so comfortable that he nearly falls asleep.
(High degree + specific effect.)
So så bekväm att … is stronger and more informative than just väldigt bekväm.
In this att-clause, the most natural position for nästan is before the verb:
- ✔ att han nästan somnar – standard, natural Swedish.
The version with nästan after the verb:
- att han somnar nästan
is possible in some contexts, but it’s less neutral and can sound a bit marked or informal. For learners, the safe rule is:
In att-clauses, place nästan (like inte, ofta, alltid) before the finite verb:
att han nästan somnar, att han inte somnar, att han ofta somnar, etc.
Of course you can omit nästan if you just want “that he falls asleep”:
- … så bekväm att han somnar. – so comfortable that he falls asleep.
But that slightly changes the meaning.
After this att (meaning “that”), you need a full clause: subject + finite verb.
So you say:
- att han nästan somnar – that he almost falls asleep.
You cannot say:
- ✘ att han nästan att somna – wrong: you’re mixing the conjunction att (“that”) with the infinitive att (“to”) in the same slot.
- han nästan ska somna would mean “he is almost going to fall asleep” – a different nuance, more about future or intention, and it’s not what the original is saying.
somnar is present tense and fits the situation: he’s sitting there now, and he nearly falls asleep because the chair is so comfortable.
Swedish does not normally drop subject pronouns. Every finite clause needs an explicit subject:
- Han tycker att han nästan somnar.
English can sometimes omit subjects in certain structures (“…that Ø almost falls asleep” is still wrong in standard English, but reduced clauses exist in other patterns). Swedish doesn’t allow that here.
Even though it’s the same person as in the first clause, the second att-clause is its own clause, so it still requires its own subject:
- att han nästan somnar – that he almost falls asleep
Leaving out han would be ungrammatical.
men is the neutral conjunction “but”, introducing a simple contrast:
- Han tycker att kön går långsamt, men stolen är så bekväm …
You could use:
- fast – more colloquial, often close to “but/although”:
Han tycker att kön går långsamt, fast stolen är så bekväm att han nästan somnar.
This is acceptable in speech and informal writing.
To use även om (“even though / although”), you must change the structure:
- Även om stolen är så bekväm att han nästan somnar, tycker han att kön går långsamt.
Here även om starts a subordinate clause. So:
- men – simplest, neutral “but”, as in the original.
- fast – similar meaning, more informal.
- även om – “even though”, but it requires different word order and clause structure.
Very roughly (Swedish sounds don’t map perfectly to English):
kön – [ɕøːn]
- kj = a soft “sh/ch” sound made far forward in the mouth.
- ö ≈ vowel in French “deux”, German “schön”; rounded lips, tongue not far back.
- Final n is clear.
går – [goːr] or [ɡoːr]
- å ≈ English “o” in “more”, but usually a bit cleaner.
- r often tapped or slightly rolled.
stolen – [ˈstuːlɛn]
- Stress on the first syllable: STO-len.
- o = long u sound, like English “stool-en”.
somnar – [ˈsɔmnar]
- Stress on som: SOM-nar.
- o ≈ English “o” in “coffee” (BrE) or “cot” (AmE).
Listening to native audio for words like kö, går, stol, somna will help fix these sounds much more than written descriptions.