lena blondel Oct 10, 2013:

Just like in English in other words.

Rika Katsuta (X) (asker) Oct 9, 2013:

>Joakim
I really don't know about their culture yet,so any information would be truly appreciated. Thank you!

>larserik
Thank you so much^^ Glad to hear your kind words.

larserik Oct 8, 2013:

Might be true (or not) ... but don't be afraid. Judging from your question, you already have contacts with Swedes. Good luck!

Joakim Braun Oct 8, 2013:

If you're learning Swedish, take note that we Swedes are as circumspect with strangers as people in any other culture. The ubiquitous informal mode of address is very much misleading in that respect. When everyone is called "du", using "du" (rather than "ni") doesn't have any significance at all. For Swedes, intimacy, or the lack of it, is communicated through means other than the use of formal or informal pronouns.

Rika Katsuta (X) (asker) Oct 8, 2013:

Hello larserik and Joakim

Thank you very much :)
Yes I have just started learning Swedish.
And I am happy to hear your those helpful informations.

Tack så mycket!

Joakim Braun Oct 8, 2013:

tack för svaret ...is a serviceable solution that avoids the pronoun altogether.

larserik Oct 8, 2013:

If you want to learn Swedish The answers you've already got are quite enough, but I'd like to complicate things for you ;-). If you want to learn Swedish you'll come across another difference, not only the formal versus informal Ert and ditt, namely the grammatical gender. When you receive a very intelligent question, you might want to start you letter with "Tack för din fråga" - where "your" isn't "ditt" but "din". This depends of the grammatical gender of the noun "fråga" which is different from the grammatical gender of "svar". There are 2 grammatical genders - not masculine and feminine as in French or Spanish, but "utrum" and "neutrum". Could be translated to "with gender" and "genderless". The first one is always (almost always) used for persons and animals plus quite a few things and phenomena, the other for the rest - things, phenomena, some animals and very few words for persons' occupations. Further, "your" could refer to more than one letter or more than one question, then it would be "dina" (for both genders). Swedish used to have masculine and feminine grammatical gender, too, but they both merged into "utrum". In my dialect e.g. "bil" (car) still is a "he", and the clock is a "she".