What does “farsan” mean in Swedish?
Hector vattnar sitt pengarträd och missförstår farsan
A2 Swedish listening practice · Gothenburg Swedish · Picked for people who know a little
A boy takes “water the money tree” hilariously literally, then protests: «jag ÄR ju mitt pengaträd, farsan!» (“but I AM my money tree, dad!”). Farsan is casual Swedish for “dad” or “the old man.”
It pairs with morsan (“mum”), both built from far (“father”) and mor (“mother”) plus a slangy -san. They’re warm and informal, what you’d say to friends, not the neat pappa and mamma kids use. The joke leans on a Swedish idiom too: pengar växer inte på träd (“money doesn’t grow on trees”), so Dad means the boy is the family’s real pengaträd (money tree).
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In casual Swedish among friends: farsan, morsan.
- ▸Versus the everyday pappa (“dad”) and mamma (“mum”).
- ▸In the idiom pengar växer inte på träd (“money doesn’t grow on trees”).
- ▸In Swedish family sitcoms and sketches.