Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

Hej, jag heter Elin. Hi everybody! I’m Elin.
Welcome to SwedishPod101.com’s “Svenska på 3 minuter”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Swedish.
In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb ska which means "to go" in Swedish.
In this lesson, we will continue our series dedicated to very common Swedish verbs.
The second verb in our series is att göra, which means "to do." It is used a lot - mostly in questions!
So imagine someone asks you Vad gör du?
That means "What are you doing?" in an informal form.
So if you are doing your homework, for example, you will say in Swedish jag gör mina läxor.
[slowly] jag gör mina läxor.
So let’s break down this answer.
First we had-
jag gör, which is "I am doing."
It is the present tense form of the verb att göra, which is "to do" in the infinitive.
Next we had mina which is the plural possessive pronoun “my" in English.
Finally we had läxor which is the noun for "Homework" in the plural form.
Note that in Swedish, you can use the present tense form to say that you are doing nothing right now.
For example if someone asks you what you are doing, and you are doing nothing, you can tell them jag gör ingenting which literally means "I am doing nothing!" Here we are using the present form.
Let’s look at some other questions where we can use the verb att göra.
Remember ska from the previous lesson? This time we will use it along with att göra to form the question, Vad ska vi göra? “What are we going to do?”
[slowly]Vad ska vi göra?
As you might remember, to direct the question at someone else, all you do is change the pronoun. To ask someone “What are you going to do?” you simply change vi with du in the previous sentence.
Vad ska du göra?
[slowly]Vad ska du göra?
Finally, let’s look at how to ask if someone is busy at the moment. To do this you have to place the verb att göra first in the sentence. So it will look like this - gör du något nu?
[slowly] gör du något nu?
Literally this translates as “are you doing anything now?” Något means “something” or “anything,” and nu means “now.”
Now it’s time for Elin’s Insights.
In Swedish, we often say vad gör du i kväll? which means “What are you doing tonight?”
For example, if you want to go out with that friend tonight, you can ask this question to see if they are available. It will sound very natural. Vad gör du i kväll?
In this lesson, we learned how to use the verb att göra in many different contexts and I’m sure it will help you a lot!
Next time we’ll learn another very useful and romantic verb, att gilla.
Do you know what this Swedish verb means?
Find out in the the next Svenska på tre minuter lesson.
Vi ses!

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