Originally posted by: Zmrzlina På Duolingo Arkiverat här
Hello dear learners of Swedish!
This post is meant to describe how time and money is commonly written in Swedish. As a reference to current Swedish events, we'll start by the ways to describe 8 pm September 9th 2018, when the polling stations close in the upcoming general elections.
TIME
Years beginning with 20... are commonly spoken as tjugohundra... ("twenty hundred") and then the year. Thus, 2018 is tjugohundraarton in spoken Swedish.
In Swedish, dates of the year have a few common standards. The variant (den) 9 september 2018 is common and recommended in a running text. When writing like this, the day is written as a cardinal number, but read like an ordinal one. Thus, the date here reads den nionde september 2018. The "den" in dates is optional but very common. Do note that Swedish does not capitalize weekdays or months!
Another way of writing dates of the year, especially when not in a running text, is DD/MM (YY)YY, e.g. 9/9 2018 or just 9/9 -18. When read out loud, this is spoken like nionde september 2018 OR nionde i nionde 2018.
A third option is to write the date as 09092018 OR 20180909. Although the latter is the ISO 8601 standard, both variants can be found in Sweden.
For time of day, Swedish usually uses a 24 hour clock in writing. In spoken Swedish, both 12 hour and 24 hour clock time is used. The 12 hour clock is usually used in less formal circumstances or in situations where it's obvious from context what is meant. So if you're planning a dinner with someone and say jag är där vid åtta (I'll be there at eight), it's understood that you mean eight in the evening and not in the morning.
MONEY
In English, the unit of currency precedes the amount. In Swedish, it's the other way around and with a space inbetween. Thus, fifty bucks will be $50 in the US, but 50 $ in Sweden. This goes for all currencies.
The Swedish currency is the Swedish krona (en-word, plural kronor), with the currency code SEK. Kronor come in coins of 1, 2, 5 and 10 kronor and banknotes of 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 kronor. A krona can be further subdivided into 100 öre (ett-word). The last öre coins to be used were the 50 öre coins, but they were taken out of circulation due to their very low value in 2010. öre are still used in the mathematics of prices though, and the total is then rounded to the closest whole krona if you pay with cash, and not rounded at all if you pay with a debit card.
There is a peculiarity with regards to the plural of öre that works just like pence and pennies in English. When speaking of the amount of currency, öre does not change in the plural. However, the regular plural ören would apply if you were speaking about several 1 öre coins.
The Swedish krona does not have single symbol such as $, £ or €, but there are other conventions that work as a shorthand. The first and most common is to write kr after the number, e.g. 100 kr. Another way is to instead write a colon and a dash, e.g. 100 :-, which is especially common on handwritten signs at markets.
Lastly, there is a last curveball thrown your way with regards to Swedish money. Conventions on rounding numbers may vary across the world, but in Sweden, .50 is always rounded up. Thus, a purchase of 123,50 kr would be rounded to 124 kr when paying with cash.
I hope that'll be of some help to you. Feel free to ask questions.
Best wishes,
Emil (Zmrzlina)