Breakdown of Vi lyssnar på en grupp som sjunger nästan lika bra som artisten från konserten.
Questions & Answers about Vi lyssnar på en grupp som sjunger nästan lika bra som artisten från konserten.
In Swedish, the verb lyssna almost always takes the preposition på when you mean to listen to something or someone: lyssna på musik, lyssna på radio, lyssna på honom.
Without på, lyssna feels incomplete or more like to pay attention, and is rare in this sense. So Vi lyssnar på en grupp literally matches We are listening *to a group* in English.
Lyssna på is to listen (actively) to something: you are focusing your attention.
Höra is to hear something: it just reaches your ears, whether you are paying attention or not.
So Vi lyssnar på en grupp = We are listening to a group, while Vi hör en grupp = We can hear a group (in the background).
Here som is a relative pronoun that means that, who, or which in English.
En grupp som sjunger = a group that sings / is singing.
Swedish almost always uses som in this kind of relative clause; it works for people, animals, and things.
Yes, en sjungande grupp is grammatically correct and means roughly the same thing (a singing group).
En grupp som sjunger sounds a bit more neutral and descriptive, like you are describing what the group is doing right now.
En sjungande grupp can sound slightly more like a label (a group whose characteristic is singing), though context matters a lot and both can often be used.
Lika … som is the basic pattern for as … as in Swedish:
- lika stor som = as big as
- lika bra som = as good / as well as
Nästan means almost, so nästan lika bra som = almost as good as / almost as well as.
You can use this pattern with many adjectives and adverbs: nästan lika lång som, nästan lika snabbt som, etc.
No, nästan normally goes before the whole lika … som phrase.
Correct: sjunger nästan lika bra som …
Putting nästan in the middle (like lika nästan bra som) sounds wrong or at best very odd in standard Swedish.
In Swedish, you use the definite form when something is specific and identifiable, not only when it has been mentioned before.
Artisten från konserten is clearly a specific artist defined by från konserten; both the artist and the concert are treated as known, particular things.
That is why you get artisten (the artist) and konserten (the concert), not en artist or en konsert.
Från literally means from and here it indicates origin or association: artisten från konserten = the artist from the concert (the one who performed there).
På konserten would mean at the concert (location), and vid konserten would be more like by / near the concert, which is not natural in this context.
So från is used because we are identifying the artist by their connection to that concert.
Sjunger is the present tense and can describe an action happening right now, just like English is singing or sings.
The sentence describes what is currently going on as you listen, so present tense is natural.
You would use sjöng (sang) or har sjungit (has sung) if you were talking about a past situation instead.
No, you cannot drop som here.
Swedish needs som to link the noun en grupp with the relative clause som sjunger nästan lika bra som artisten från konserten.
Without som, en grupp sjunger would start to look like a new main clause, and the sentence becomes ungrammatical.
Grammatically, bra here is an adverb, so the most precise English translation is sings almost as well as the artist.
However, in everyday English many people also say almost as good as, and the Swedish lika bra som can correspond to both, depending on context.