Language/Swedish/Grammar/How-to-Talk-About-Your-Daily-Routine

How to Talk About Your Daily Routine

The Focus of this Lesson is on How to Talk About Your Daily Routine.

How to talk about our daily routine by using time references such as på morgonen

''På morgonen äter jag frukost.''

"In the morning, I eat breakfast."

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ln this lesson, we'll learn to talk about our daily routine. Talking about our daily routine can, of course, be done in numerous ways, but in this lesson, we'll learn how to do this with the help of time references such as på morgonen ("in the morning"), på eftermiddagen ("in the afternoon"), and på kvällen ("in the evening"), together with verbs that describe the activity that is part of your daily routine. To start with, we'll review some of the sentences that appear in this lesson's dialogue to get a sense of how these types of sentences can be constructed. Let's have a look.

1. På morgonen äter jag frukost. "In the morning, I eat breakfast."
2. På eftermiddagen tar jag ofta en promenad. "In the afternoon, I go for a walk."
3. På kvällen träffar jag vänner. "In the evening, I meet friends."

Before we look more closely at how to create these types of sentences, there's something that needs to be mentioned about the word order. Simple statements in Swedish such as Jag är trött ("I'm tired.") often follow a straight word order, which means that the sentence starts off with the subject of the sentence, followed by the first verb. The sentences above, however, follow an inverted word order because the sentence is introduced by a time reference such as på morgonen ("in the morning") or på kvällen ("in the evening").

An inverted word order, more specifically, means that the first verb is placed after the time reference, followed by the subject. Let's illustrate this with two examples in which the first sentence follows a straight word order and the second sentence follows an inverted word order.

For example:

1. Jag äter frukost. "I eat breakfast."
2. På morgonen äter jag frukost. "In the morning, I eat breakfast."

Now that we have a better understanding of what kind of word order the sentences we're creating will follow, we'll look more closely at the actual sentences that describe our daily routine. In order to make it more comprehensive, we'll break the sentence down into two parts and examine them separately. First off, we'll start with the first part of the sentence that holds the time reference. Here are the three time references in Swedish with their English translations.

Swedish / English

på morgonen / "in the morning"

på eftermiddagen / "in the afternoon"

på kvällen / "in the evening"

As you might have noticed, the preposition used in these time references is the Swedish preposition på. På is generally translated as "on," but the way in which it's used here instead corresponds to the English "in."

Now that we know how to start our sentence, we'll focus more on the second part of the sentence--the part that describes the actual routine. In order to be able to talk about routines, we'll start by introducing some verbs that describe common activities. All of these verbs will be presented in their present tense, since this is the tense that can be used when talking about an activity that happens on a regular basis.

Swedish / English

pluggar / "study"

tränar / "work out"

fikar / "go for coffee"

The second part of the sentence, in its most basic form, consists of two words: the verb describing the activity and the pronoun or a name of a person who performs the activity. What pronoun you want to use when creating these types of sentences depends on if you want to talk about your daily routine or someone else's daily routine. In this lesson, we'll only use the personal pronoun jag ("I") to make things a bit less complicated, which means that you'll learn to talk about your own daily routine. The second part of the sentence starts off with the verb and is then followed by the subject of the sentence, namely, the pronun jag ("I"), since the sentence has an inverted word order. Let's look at some examples.

For example:

1. ...pluggar jag."...I study."
2. ...fikar jag. "...I go for a coffee."
3. ...tränar jag. "...I work out."

Now let's form full sentences by putting the time reference together with the second part of the sentence that describes the activity.

For example:

1. På morgonen pluggar jag. "In the morning, I study."
2. På eftermiddagen fikar jag. "In the afternoon, I go for a coffee."
3. På kvällen tränar jag. "In the evening, I work out." 

How to talk about our daily routine by using more specific time references

Före frukost tar jag en promenad.

"Before breakfast, I take a walk."

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In a previous lesson, we learned how to talk about our daily routine by using time references such as på morgonen ("in the morning") with a verb that described an activity. In this lesson, we'll continue to learn how to talk about our daily routine, but this time, we'll use time references that help us to be a bit more specific of when we actually do something. The time references that we'll learn how to use appear in this lesson's dialogue.

Examples from this dialogue:

1. Före frukosten tar jag en promenad. "Before breakfast, I take a walk."
2. Efter frukosten brukar jag göra något med barnen."After breakfast, I usually do something with the kids."

As you might have already noticed, both of the sentences above are introduced by a time reference, which means that the sentence will follow an inverted word order in which the first verb is placed before the subject of the sentence. In both of the sentences above, this subject is represented by the personal pronoun jag ("I"). We'll now move on to learn how to use this for sentences similar to the ones above, and to do so, we'll break the sentences into two parts and examine them separately.

We'll start with the first part of the sentence, which consists of a time reference such as innan frukost ("before breakfast") or efter frukost ("after breakfast"). These time references are formed with prepositions such as före ("before") and efter ("after") that help us to be more precise in terms of when something is happening, and nouns such as frukosten ("breakfast"), which we associate with a period of time during the day. By placing före ("before") in front of a noun like frukosten, we can talk about things that happen before breakfast. By placing the word efter ("after") in front of nouns like frukosten, we can instead talk about things that happen after breakfast.

For example:

1. Före lunch... "Before lunch..."
2. Efter lunch... "After lunch..."
3. Före middagen... "Before dinner..."
4. Efter middagen... "After dinner..."

The second part of the sentence describes the activity that you are doing. This part of the sentence, more specifically, consists of a verb and the subject of the sentence. We'll start by introducing some verbs that can be useful. The verbs are presented in their present tense since the present tense, among other things, can be used to talk about something continuously, such as an activity in your daily routine.

Swedish / English

jobbar / "work"

läser / "read"

städar / "clean"

The subject of the sentence can, for example, be a personal pronoun such as "I" or a noun, such as someone's name. In this lesson, we'll use the personal pronoun jag ("I"). To form the second part of the sentence, we use the verb, since the sentence follows an inverted word order. The verb is then followed by a subject.

For example:

1.  ...jobbar jag. "...I work."
2. ...läser jag. "...I read."
3. ...städar jag. "...I clean."

Now, let's form full sentences by putting the time reference together with the second part of the sentence that describes the activity.

For example:

1. Före frukost jobbar jag. "Before breakfast, I work."
2. Efter lunch läser jag. "Before lunch, I read."
3. Före middagen städar jag. "Before dinner, I clean." 

Other Lessons

• Definite Articles in Swedish
• Negations
• Present Tense
• How to express ownership
• Location
• How to Express Feelings of Joy and Anger
• Prepositions
• How to express our feelings
• Nouns
• Plurals
• How to Talk About How Something Smells
• Pronouns
• How to Talk About the Weather
• How to Describe Someone's Appearance and Personality
• Questions