# Swedish : Inte, after or before the pronoun object ??



## EL LOL

Hi , my question is when the pronoun object is placed before inte and after inte ,,because in these two sentences i cannot understand the different.         .                                                                                                                           *                                      jag såg honom inte .                                                                                                   *.       Känner du erik ? Nej, jag känner inte honom . .                                                                                             *.                                                                                              Tack .


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## Halfdan

I believe it has to do with stress. In a simple sentence like S+V+O, the clausal adverbial (_inte_ in this case) immediately follows the verb, as you probably understand. But if one chooses to unstress the object, it can go before the clausal adverbial. So...
*
Jag såg honom inte.* _I_ did not see him (stress on I... maybe others saw him)
*Jag såg inte honom.* I did not see _him_ (stress on him... I saw others, but not him)

*Jag känner inte honom.* I don't know him (stress on him... I don't know Erik, but I know others people)
*Jag känner honom inte. *I don't know him (stress on I... I don't know Erik, maybe others do)

I don't know how well that was explained, so it'd be best to wait for a native.


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## EL LOL

Tack så mycket ,, it was very helpful .


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## Tjahzi

I second everything Halfdan said, with a minor remark. With standard word order, as displayed in (1) and (4), the "stress", if any, is on the verb. If you want to stress that _you_, as opposed to everyone else, didn't see him, you simply have to stress that _you_, which is not necessarily standard, although Halfdan's examples might indicate this. Do note that this distinction cannot smoothly be made in writing. 

A few examples, where (1) is standard and the other two simply variations, to further clarify:

(1) Jag såg honom inte. - No stress. Was he there? Well, you didn't see him.
(3) _Jag_ såg honom inte. - Stress on _jag_. He might have been there, but you didn't see him.
(2) Jag såg inte honom. - Stress on _honom_. You didn't see him, but yes, you saw others.


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## jackuppskararen

On a side-note, many people fail to distinguish between "han" and "honom", so I think you often hear "jag känner han inte" (which is wrong of course!)


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## EL LOL

Tack tack


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## JohanIII

On the sidenote: as jackuppsararen says poeple are sometimes ignorant.

But this also happens in contracted speech: "ja känner'an inte".
It's just too difficult to contract "honom".
And as a consequence nobody feels much guilt in doing it wrong this way, though you do recognize that you're not speaking _rikssvenska_ anymore.
Or maybe it's the other way around - no _rikssvenska_, no guilt  .
But - learn the correct way first.


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## EL LOL

Ok , Tack


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## Lugubert

jackuppskararen said:


> On a side-note, many people fail to distinguish between "han" and "honom", so I think you often hear "*jag känner han inte*" (which is wrong of course!)


Bolded by me.
Quite correct in regional Göteborg dialect. Here, among many, the historically totally correct ackusative _han _still lives on. _Honom _is the old dative, which for some obscure reasons has crowded out that _han_ from standard Swedish.


JohanIII said:


> But - learn the correct way first.


Please do, but don't automatically link object _han_ to poor language.


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## EL LOL

Tack tack


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