Reporting What Happened
News, crime fiction and history all draw on the same small field. You already know mordet, vittnet and tjuven from the past-tense lessons; this is the vocabulary that goes around them.
| word | English |
|---|---|
| döda | to kill |
| skjuta | to shoot |
| jaga | to hunt, chase |
| slåss | to fight (physically) |
| vakten | the guard |
| kulan | the bullet; the marble |
| The police chased the thief through the park. | Polisen jagade tjuven genom parken. |
Slåss is a deponent verb — it looks passive but is not, and it has no slå sig meaning here. Two people slåss; one person slår.
Two Words With Two Lives
Kulan is the bullet in a report and the marble in a playground — the same word, and context decides. Drogen is the drug in the sense of a narcotic; the medicine you are prescribed is medicinen.
| The bullet never hit its target. | Kulan träffade aldrig sitt mål. |
Strong Words
Helvetet and synden belong to religion and to swearing in equal measure. Helvetet is hell, and Swedes use it as an intensifier far more freely than English speakers use its equivalent; synden is the sin.
| Sin was an important word in the church. | Synden var ett viktigt ord i kyrkan. |
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