To use the correct forms of a Swedish noun you need to know the answers to the following questions: 

1. Gender 
Is the word an en word or an ett word? 

2. Indefinite or definite 
Does the word denote something in general (indefinite form: ‘a bus’, any bus) or someone or something specific (definite form: ‘the/this bus’)? 

3. Number: Singular or plural 
Are you referring to one thing or several? (See chapter 4!) 

This is less complicated than it sounds, luckily.

English is very simple in this respect, since it treats all the nouns the same way: There is no grammatical difference between ‘a woman’ and ‘a child’, for example.² In contrast to this very easy-to-learn system Swedish sees ‘woman’ as an en word (‘en kvínna’) but ‘child’ as an ett word (‘ett barn’), and therefore uses two different words for the English ‘a’ to differentiate between them. 

The rules for telling whether a noun is an en word or an ett word are rather intricate as well as vague, and it would be easier just to memorize each noun together with the article ‘en’ or ‘ett’ to avoid confusion. Words denoting people and animals, though, are, with very few exceptions (among them ‘ett barn’, and ‘ett djur’ - an animal), en words. If you are not sure what form to use, treat the noun as an en word; statistically you would then be right four times out of five. 

Notes 

1. Many Swedish dialects still use the older division of nouns into three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, and refer to things as he, she or it, like German. In Standard Swedish the nouns of the original masculine and feminine genders form the en-word group. 

2. English has also two forms of the indefinite article: ‘a’ and ‘an’ (as in ‘an example’) both derived from the word for ‘one’. Since which one to use is decided by the initial sound of the following word only, they do not have the grammatical significance as the Swedish ‘en’ and ‘ett’.

En words: 
 

Indefinite	Definite
en dag (a/one day)	dág-en (the day)
en hand (a/one hand)	hánd-en (the hand)
en männíska (a/one man/human being)	mä´nniska-n (the man/human being)

Ett words: 
 

Indefinite	Definite
ett år (a/one year)	å´r-et (the year)
ett barn (a/one child)	bárn-et (the child)
ett kök (a/one kitchen)	kö´k-et (the kitchen)
ett ö´ga (a/one eye)	ö´ga-t (the eye)

The special endings for the definite forms are thus -(e)n and -(e)t; a noun that ends in a vowel will take only -n or -t. 

Notes 

-sk- in ‘människa’ is irregular and pronounced similarly as ‘sh’ in ‘shut’, in spite of its being followed by the hard vowel 'a'. ‘k’ in ‘kök’ is pronounced like the ‘tj’ sound, since it is followed by a soft vowel. Read more about the pronunciation in Chapter 9. 

As mentioned in Chapter 1 the English pronoun ‘it’ can be expressed in two ways in Swedish, depending on the gender of the word it stands for: ‘den’ for en words; ‘det’ for ett words, and in neutral expressions like ‘it’s hot in here’.

Hur mýcket är klóckan? Jag vet ínte, den är trásig. Men det är sent, éller hur? 
How much is the clock/watch [i.e. What time is it?]? I know not, it is broke. But it is late, or how [i.e. right/isn’t it]? 

Ser du húset? Det lígger där/där bórta. 
See you the house? It lies there/over there. 

Note 

When describing location, that is where something is, Swedes often say that things "stand" ("står") or "lie" ("ligger") somewhere, instead of just saying "they are here". Which expression to choose depends on the object in question and its position.

"Eller hur" has only this form, and corresponds to the English expressions "he's tall, isn't he?", "you're tired, aren't you", they won't come, will they?", "she does like me, doesn't she?", and so on, but is not used as frequently as in English.

Copyright Urban Sikeborg,
Stockholm 1997-1998.