Language/Swedish/Grammar/How-to-Talk-About-How-Something-Smells

How to Talk About How Something Smells

The Focus of this Lesson is on How to Talk About How Something Smells.

Den luktar illa!

'"It smells bad!"'

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In this lesson, we'll learn to talk about how something smells, and we'll cover both a very simple and generic way of doing that, as well as give you some tools to be more specific with how something smells. Being able to talk about how something smells might not seem like a very important skill to master, but it's something that can come in handy in many different types of situations, for example, when discussing the smell of a beauty product or maybe when cooking with your friends. First, we'll look at some very simple ways of saying that something either smells good or bad--two sentences that both appeared in this lesson's dialogue.

1. Det luktar gott."It smells nice."
2. Det luktar illa."It smells bad."

These two sentences can be used in pretty much any situation--when we talk about food, perfume, flowers, bathrooms, laundry, and so on. So just by learning these set sentences, you've come pretty far. However, sometimes you'll find yourself in situations where you'll feel that these set sentences aren't enough because you'd like to talk about how something smells rather than simply stating that something smells good or bad. This can easily be done by replacing the gott ("nice") or illa ("bad") with a suitable noun that describes what something smells like.

For example:

1. Det luktar rosor."It smells like roses."
2. Det luktar vanilj. "It smells like vanilla."
3. Det luktar skit. "It smells like crap."
4. Det luktar svett. "It smells like sweat."

The number of nouns you can use to talk about how something smells are endless. It's just your imagination that sets the limits. There are also some adjectives that can be inserted after Det luktar... ("It smells...").

For example:

1. Det luktar surt."It smells sour."
2. Det luktar fränt. "It smells pungent."
3. Det luktar sött."It smells sweet." 

After mastering this lesson, these related pages might interest you: Future Tense, Learn Swedish Sentense Structure. Subject, Verb and object., Present tense & Present Tense.

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