Swedish glass is not the same as English "glass": in Sweden, this is the word for "ice cream".
It can be confusing as a language learner, because the word for "glass" is glas.
As we write in The Local's Villa Volvo Vovve book: "The most important thing to focus on when learning basic Swedish pronunciation is stress. Stress is marked with a long syllable, and within that syllable, there is either a long vowel sound or a long consonant sound."
Glas has a long vowel sound, whereas glass has a long consonant sound.
- Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it. It is also possible to buy your copy from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Bokus or Adlibris
This is not a perfect example, but glas is pronounced similarly to how a posh English person would say "glass", whereas glass sounds more like when a Scot or someone from Northern England says "glass" (alternatively, a vowel that's somewhere in-between "blunt" and "bland").
The other difference between the two is that glass is an "en" word and glas is an "ett" word.
Glass meaning "ice cream" is a borrowing from French glace (ice cream), and when it first appeared in Swedish it kept the French spelling, although over the years it became Swedified as glass.
Look out for lots of compound words containing glass, such as jordgubbsglass (strawberry ice cream), chokladglass (chocolate ice cream) and more Swedish variants like saltlakritsglass (salty liquorice ice cream).
Swedes are big ice cream consumers, which might seem surprising given that it's such a cold country. But it's a hugely popular treat in all seasons, though especially in summer, whether you buy your glass from the neighbourhood glassbil (literally "ice cream car", or ice cream van) or at one of the many ice cream parlours in Sweden's towns and cities.
Example sentences
Jag älskar att äta glass oavsett årstid
I love eating ice cream no matter what season it is
Den kan vara den godaste glassen jag ätit
This might be the tastiest ice cream I've had
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