Swedish object pronouns: mig, dig, honom, henne, dem

You know the subject pronouns from the very first articles: jag, du, han and friends. When a pronoun receives the action instead of doing it, Swedish switches form, exactly as English switches I to me: Kan du hjälpa mig?▶ Can you help me? Here is the full set, plus the pronunciation quirks that make three of them sound nothing like they're spelled.

The table

Good news in the middle of the table: hen, den and det don't change at all.

How they actually sound

• mig and dig are pronounced "mej" and "dej", and you'll sometimes see them spelled that way in texts and ads. Standard writing keeps mig and dig.
• dem is pronounced "dom", identical to de. In speech the subject/object distinction for "they/them" is completely inaudible.

That last fact produces a famous native-speaker problem: since de and dem sound the same, Swedes themselves mix them up in writing constantly, and de/dem errors are a running national debate. You, an English speaker, have a secret advantage: your they/them instinct maps perfectly. Where English would say "them", write dem. You will out-spell natives on this one point.

After prepositions: always the object form

Just like English "with me" and "to her": med mig, till henne, från oss, för dem.

• Hon bor med oss.▶ She lives with us.
• Jag har en fråga till dig.▶ I have a question for you.

Hear them in use

Five sentences, all built on verbs you know.

Swedish

English

Can you help me?

I'll call you tomorrow.

We know him from work.

Tell us!

I like them.

Passage vocabulary

Two verbs in the audio are new and worth keeping:

• hjälpa: to help. Kan du hjälpa mig?▶ may be the single most useful sentence in this series.
• känner: knows (a person). Swedish splits English "know": känner for people, vet for facts.
• tycker om: likes. Two words that work as one verb; the story of why lives in the particle verbs article.