Jag lade märke till att hon inte heller ville prata om jobbet under middagen.

Because lägga märke till is a fixed Swedish expression meaning to notice.

It is made up of:

• lägga = to put / lay
• märke = mark / notice
• till = a particle

But you should learn lägga märke till as one unit, because its meaning is not fully predictable from the individual words.

In this sentence:

• Jag lade märke till ... = I noticed ...

Also notice that till is separated from the verb here. That is normal with many Swedish particle verbs and fixed verb expressions.

Lade is the past tense of lägga.

So:

• lägger = present tense, put / lay
• lade = past tense, put / laid
• lagt = supine/past participle form used in perfect constructions, for example har lagt

Since the sentence describes something that happened in the past, Swedish uses lade:

• Jag lade märke till ... = I noticed ...

This is because att introduces a subordinate clause, and Swedish word order changes in subordinate clauses.

Main clause word order often has the finite verb in second position:

• Hon ville inte heller prata.

But after att, Swedish usually places sentence adverbs like inte before the finite verb:

• att hon inte heller ville prata

So the structure is:

• att
  • subject + adverb + finite verb

Here:

• hon = subject
• inte heller = not either / also not
• ville = finite verb

That is why inte comes before ville.

Inte heller means not either or neither in this kind of sentence.

So:

• hon ville inte heller prata om jobbet = she did not want to talk about work either

It shows that someone else probably also did not want to talk about work, and now she is being added to that negative idea.

Compare:

• Jag ville inte prata om jobbet. Hon ville inte heller prata om jobbet. = I didn’t want to talk about work. She didn’t want to either.

A common learner mistake is trying to translate English word-for-word with something like också inte. In Swedish, inte heller is the natural choice here.

Because vilja is a modal-type verb, and after it Swedish normally uses the infinitive without att.

So:

• ville prata = wanted to talk
• not ville att prata

This is similar to English, where you say wanted to talk, not wanted to to talk.

Other common verbs that also take an infinitive without att include:

• kan prata = can talk
• ska prata = will / shall talk
• måste prata = must talk

Jobbet is the definite form of jobb, meaning the job. But in Swedish, the definite form is often used where English simply says work, especially when talking about someone’s job in a general but understood sense.

So:

• prata om jobbet often means talk about work
• literally, it is closer to talk about the job

This sounds natural in Swedish because the context usually makes it clear which job is meant.

You could also hear:

• prata om arbetet

But jobbet is usually more everyday and conversational.

Both can relate to work, but they are not always used in exactly the same way.

• jobb is more everyday and conversational
• arbete is a bit more formal or abstract

In this sentence, jobbet sounds very natural in ordinary spoken Swedish:

• prata om jobbet under middagen

If you said arbetet, it would still be understandable, but it may sound slightly more formal or less conversational depending on context.

Under middagen means during dinner.

Here:

• under = during
• middagen = the dinner

So:

• under middagen = during the dinner / during dinner

This is a very natural way to express time in Swedish.

English often says simply at dinner, but Swedish commonly uses:

• under middagen = during dinner
• sometimes also vid middagen depending on context

In this sentence, under middagen emphasizes the time period while they were eating dinner.

Yes, grammatically you could, but prata is more natural here.

• prata = talk, chat, speak in everyday language
• tala = speak, but often a bit more formal, careful, or written

So:

• ville prata om jobbet sounds natural and conversational
• ville tala om jobbet is possible, but less idiomatic in this everyday context

Be careful, though: tala om can also mean tell or mention, depending on context, so it can sometimes introduce ambiguity.

Because till is part of the expression, and in Swedish these particles often come after the object-like element.

The expression is:

• lägga märke till något

For example:

• Jag lade märke till henne. = I noticed her.
• Jag lade märke till att hon inte heller ville prata ... = I noticed that she also didn’t want to talk ...

So till belongs to the whole expression, even though it appears at the end.

This kind of structure can feel unusual to English speakers, but it is normal in Swedish.

Yes. Jag märkte att ... is possible and often more straightforward.

Compare:

• Jag lade märke till att ...
• Jag märkte att ...

Both can mean I noticed that ...

The difference is often one of nuance:

• märkte is shorter and more direct
• lade märke till can feel slightly more like became aware of / noticed specifically

In many contexts, they are interchangeable, but lade märke till can sound a little more deliberate.

Because the main clause begins in the normal order:

• Jag = subject
• lade = finite verb

So the sentence starts with standard Swedish main-clause word order:

• Jag lade märke till ...

After that comes the subordinate clause introduced by att:

• att hon inte heller ville prata om jobbet under middagen

Inversion in Swedish usually happens when something other than the subject comes first in a main clause, for example:

• Under middagen lade jag märke till att ...

There, Under middagen is first, so the finite verb lade must come before the subject jag.

But in your original sentence, the subject Jag already comes first, so no inversion is needed.