Jag går till sjön med barnen.

I walk to the lake with the children.

Breakdown of Jag går till sjön med barnen.

• jag: I
• till: to
• barnet: the child
• gå: to walk
• sjön: the lake
• med: to

Questions & Answers about Jag går till sjön med barnen.

In this sentence, does går mean specifically "walk", or can it also just mean "go"?

Går literally means walks / is walking, i.e. movement on foot.

However, in everyday Swedish, går is often used where English would just say go, if it’s understood you’re going on foot:

• Jag går till sjön. – I’m walking to the lake.
• Jag går till jobbet. – I walk / go to work (on foot).

If you mean going by car, bus, train, etc., you normally use åker:

• Jag åker till sjön. – I go / am going to the lake (by vehicle, not walking).

So: går = on foot; åker = by some form of transport.

Why is it sjön and not just sjö?

Sjö means lake (indefinite form).
Sjön means the lake (definite form).

Swedish usually marks “the” by adding an ending to the noun instead of using a separate word:

• en sjö – a lake
• sjön – the lake

So in till sjön, the -n at the end is functioning like English the.

How do I know when to say sjö and when to say sjön?

Use sjö (indefinite) when you talk about a lake in general or introduce it for the first time:

• Vi såg en sjö. – We saw a lake.
• Det finns en sjö här. – There is a lake here.

Use sjön (definite) when you mean a specific lake that the listener can identify from context or previous mention:

• Vi går till sjön. – We’re going to the lake (you know which one I mean).
• Vi såg en sjö. Sjön var väldigt vacker. – We saw a lake. The lake was very beautiful.

In your sentence, sjön implies “the usual/known lake” in the situation.

Why is it sjön and not something like sjöen for “the lake”?

Swedish doesn’t usually add -en directly to words ending in a vowel. Instead, the vowel often changes or you add just -n. For sjö:

• en sjö – a lake
• sjön – the lake
• sjöar – lakes
• sjöarna – the lakes

So “the lake” is sjön, not sjöen.
You just have to learn each noun’s definite pattern, but many en-words ending in a vowel + consonant behave similarly (e.g. en sko – skon “the shoe”).

Why is barnen “the children”? How does that form work?

The base word is barn:

• ett barn – a child
• barn – children (indefinite plural)
• barnen – the children (definite plural)

Barn is a neuter noun (ett-ord) and is irregular because:

• The singular and plural indefinite are the same form: barn.
• You only see that it’s plural when you add something like många barn (many children), två barn (two children), or when you use the definite plural ending -en: barnen.

So in med barnen, barnen clearly means the children.

Why do we use till in till sjön, and not something like i, på, or vid?

Till is used for movement towards a destination: “to(wards)” or “to”.

• Jag går till sjön. – I walk to the lake.
• Vi åker till Stockholm. – We go to Stockholm.

Other prepositions describe location, not movement:

• i sjön – in the lake (e.g. swimming in it)
• vid sjön – by the lake / at the lakeside
• på sjön – on the lake (e.g. in a boat, out on the water)

So, when you’re going to the lake, you use till sjön.

Why is it med barnen? Is med exactly like “with” in English?

Yes, med is the normal word for with:

• med barnen – with the children
• med min vän – with my friend

You can add tillsammans (together) for emphasis:

• Jag går till sjön tillsammans med barnen. – I’m going to the lake together with the children.

But plain med already implies they accompany you.

Could I also say Jag går med barnen till sjön? Is that still correct?

Yes, that is correct:

• Jag går till sjön med barnen.
• Jag går med barnen till sjön.

Both are grammatical and natural. The difference is subtle and mostly about focus:

• till sjön med barnen: slightly more focus on the destination (to the lake), then who is with you.
• med barnen till sjön: slightly more focus on the fact that you are with the children, then where you’re going.

In everyday speech, both word orders are used and both are fine.

How is sjön pronounced? The sj and ö look tricky.

Approximate pronunciation (standard Swedish):

• sjön ≈ [ʃœn] or [ɧœn] (varies by dialect)

Key parts:

• sj-: This is the “sj‑sound”, a special Swedish consonant.
  It’s often described as somewhere between English sh in “shoe” and a breathy h. It’s not exactly like English s or sh.
• ö: A rounded vowel, like the vowel in British English “bird” or “nurse”, but with rounded lips.
• Final -n is just an n sound.

So you could think of sjön roughly as “sh-urn” with rounded lips on the vowel, but it’s a distinct Swedish sound you mainly learn by listening.

Why is Jag capitalized? Is that always the case in Swedish like English “I”?

Jag is capitalized here because it’s at the beginning of the sentence, not because it means “I”.

In Swedish:

• Jag – I (capital J at sentence start)
• jag – I (lowercase if it appears in the middle of a sentence)

Examples:

• Jag går till sjön med barnen.
• I dag går jag till sjön. – Today I’m going to the lake.

Unlike English I, the Swedish pronoun jag is not always capitalized; it follows normal sentence-capitalization rules.

Does the verb change if the subject is plural, like in English “I go” vs “he goes”?

No, Swedish verbs do not change with person or number in the present tense.

The verb går is the same for all subjects:

• Jag går – I go / am going
• Du går – You go / are going
• Han / Hon / Den / Det går – He / She / It goes / is going
• Vi går – We go / are going
• Ni går – You (plural/formal) go / are going
• De går – They go / are going

So you never add an -s like English he goes; it stays går for everyone.