Re: Weekly Vocab 6: to know

Jessica Husén wrote:
> Pavel Iosad wrote:
> > Then there's Swedish 'veta', 'känna', 'kunna'. I'll let the native
> > speakers tell us about them, I can't get the hang of it :-(
>
> Well. I'm kind of confused right now. So though I am a native
> speaker I think I'll let someone else (Daniel? Camilla?) handle
> this instead.
hej Jessica! glad att se dig titta fram :)

känna, in the sense relevant here means "to know <someone>". ( it also has a
homonym meaning "to feel". )

the difference between veta and kunna is something I've never really thought
about before. it's one of those things you just... uhm... know :)

but here goes!

veta is mostly used for facts, where as kunna is used for knowledge. did that
make any kind of sense to anyone? veta is where you put your glasses, kunna
is having done your math homework.

both can also be used in the sense of knowing how to use something, but not in
the same way.

veta hur man använder <något>
kunna använda <något>

both mean "know how to use <something>", but I cannot think of any difference
in meaning. the latter form is most often used, for reasons of breivity.

---
Camilla
( sitting on my old FreeBSD station, since the power-adapter for the iBook
broke. here's hoping this arrives intact... )

Reply