Regna is one of those sturdy, friendly, old-school Germanic words that is recognisable across many related languages, including English and Swedish. It means "to rain" – regnar in the present tense ("raining" or "rains").
Another of its friendly qualities is that the noun is essentially the same as the verb: so, att regna means "to rain", and regn means "rain". (If you want to say "the rain", it's regnet and ett regn if you want the less common indefinite form "a rain").
Both the noun and the verb are – alas! – likely to be useful vocabulary in the coming months, because Swedish summer is notorious for being rainy – or, at least, to have as much chance of rain as it does of shine. There's even a classic Swedish summer song from the 80s, called Sommaren är kort ("The Summer is Short"), where the chorus runs: sommaren är kort/det mesta regnar bort ("the summer is short/it mostly rains away").
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The good news is that once you have this word under your belt, you'll be well equipped to join in with a common Swedish summer conversation topic: the weather. Yes, it may sound boring, but given how brief and precious summertime is in Sweden after the long winter, a bit of fixating on whether your beach plans might get rained out is understandable.
So pack regn and att regna into your Swedish summer vocab bag and before long you'll be commenting on, speculating about, wishing away the rain like a local.
(Plus, the word regn is exactly the same in all the languages descended from Old Norse, so this one should help you out a bit in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland too).
Example sentences:
Det regnar så mycket idag!
It's raining so much today!
Hoppas att det inte blir regn imorgon – jag vill gärna åka till stranden.
Hope we won't get rain tomorrow – I really want to go to the beach.
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.