Swedish language group

[Devilcandy]

I'll begin by having a look at articles of speech then - what we would call an ordklass. :-)

Swedish has (sort of) ten of them, much like English.

• Substantiv - nouns
• Adjektiv - adjectives
• Verb - verbs
• Adverb - adverbs
• Pronomen - pronouns
• Prepositioner - prepositions
• Räkneord - numerals
• Konjunktioner - conjunctions
• Subjunktioner - subjunctions
• Interjektioner - interjections

I'll write a piece on nouns later.

[Devilcandy]

Nouns

To begin with, the main difference between Swedish and English is that Swedish has grammatical gender, much like for example German and Spanish. However, modern Swedish only has two official grammatical gender: utrum and neutrum, also known as n-genus and t-genus. We used to have masculinum and femininum as well, but nowadays only remnants of them are left in the language, mainly in dialects.

Roughly 75 % of Swedish nouns are utrum, n-genus, so if you have to guess, guess at that. Unfortunately there are no clear-cut rules as to what noun goes in what cathegory, although I've noticed that nouns that would take das in German often seems to be neutrum, t-genus.

So, what does it matter? Quite a bit actually.

A noun's gender affects its indefinite articles, and also the pronouns this or that (I'm getting these mixed up with "the" in my head right now, I'd see these as more of a definite article actually). This or that would be either den or det. The indefinite articles are en or ett.
It also affects what suffix is put after the noun to show it's definite: -en or -et.

Example of utrum: dog - hund
A dog - en hund
The dog - Hunden
That dog - den hunden

Example of neutrum: house - hus
A house - ett hus
The house - Huset
That house - det huset

[Solovei]

I've been wondering, when it comes to plurals, it seems like all ett-words I come across don't take a separate ending like en-words would (so the plural and the singular form are the same, and you can tell which one by the article or the other words around it) ... Is that true or am I just getting confused?

[ruth]

I've been wondering, when it comes to plurals, it seems like all ett-words I come across don't take a separate ending like en-words would (so the plural and the singular form are the same, and you can tell which one by the article or the other words around it) ... Is that true or am I just getting confused?

iirc, it depends on whether the word ends in a vowel or a consonant.

consonant words have the pattern ett ord – ordet — flera ord – orden.

whereas vowel words have the pattern ett äpple – äpplet — flera äpplen – äpplena.

[Devilcandy]

I'd say that you are 99 % correct. There are most likely exceptions, but I can't think of a single neutrum noun that would take a plural suffix, at least not right now. They do change when you make them definite, though. Most seem to take -en as suffix then.
Ett hus/A house - det huset/that house - flera hus/several houses - de husen/those houses.
Ett träd - det trädet - flera träd - de träden
Ett djur - det djuret - flera djur - de djuren
Ett ljus - det ljuset - flera ljus - de ljusen
Ett kort - det kortet - flera kort - de korten

I just thought of a couple of exceptions, but I have a hard time thinking of more:
Ett strå - det strået - flera strån - de stråna (strand as in strand of hair, or the word for a single blade of grass)
Ett öga - det ögat - flera ögon - de ögonen (eye)

[Devilcandy]

Hah, thanks Ruth.  Here I try to sound all expert-y, and then I can't even remember such a thing. It certainly is different looking at the language from the "outside". 

[ruth]

augh, you're so right though! ögon/ögonen is my personal bête noire, even now that i've wrapped my mind around most of the usages for bestämd/obestämd form, that irregular plural constantly trips me up.

[Auleliel]

*raises her hand and waves it so enthusiastically that she almost knocks over the kid sleeping at the next desk*

Teacher! Teacher! I have a somewhat-off-topic question!

*ahem*

When making an affirmative answer to a negative question, why is the word "det" used twice?
(Such as in "Finns det ingen mat? --Jo, det finns det.")

*sits attentively at her desk with pen poised over a fresh page in her notebook, ready to take detailed notes*

[Devilcandy]

My first thought was that it's a phrasal verb, like in phrases like: "jump on"/"hoppa på" or "get out"/"få ut".

But when I look at it, I rather think that it's two pronouns pointing back to two different things. The first "det" is a pronoun linked to the verb (finns det/det finns), and the second "det" is a pronoun linked to the noun (mat/det). So: "Finns det ingen mat?" "Jo, det finns det."

It would be perfectly possible to either say: "Finns det ingen mat?" "Jo, det finns." or "Finns det ingen mat?" "Jo, det finns mat." The last one feels a bit superfluous though, but I wouldn't raise my eyebrows at the first one.

Editing and modifying my earlier answer when I found a better explanation online. It is a type of pronoun: http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/theswedishteacher/tag/definite-form/ (a great blog written by a smarter person than me) mentions something called a determinative pronoun, a pronoun showing that we haven't got all information yet but will get it. In this case, the missing information is what noun the speaker asks if it exists. "Finns det ingen mat?" "Finns det ingen hund?" "Finns det något hus?" "Finns det någon hjälp?"

[Devilcandy]

So, to continue having a look at nouns, I actually had to go look certain things up myself. Before this I hadn't thought much about the fact that Swedish has several declensions, since it's one of those things you "just know" if it's your native tongue.

Once we know what gender a noun has, there are three more things to think about.
Numerus (one/many): singular or plural
Bestämdhet ("definiteness"): definite or indefinite
If the noun signifies possession: nominativ or genitiv

There are probably exceptions, since languages seem to be made up of exceptions, but in most cases I'd say that a noun always fits into three of these groups. It's either singular or plural, either definite or indefinite, either nominativ or genitiv.

Singular/Plural
As I'm typing this, I realize that learning Swedish must be absolutely terrible. Plural is signified by adding a suffix to the noun, but as I check Wikipedia to refresh my memory, I see that most languages only have two or possibly three suffixes for plural. We have five. Well, six, if you count those that don't take a suffix at all.
-or, -ar, -er, -r, -n

• -or, for utrum nouns (remember, 75 % of nouns are utrum) that end with -a. These are fairly common: flicka - flickor, kvinna - kvinnor, blomma - blommor, lampa - lampor
• -ar, for utrum nouns that are usually short one-syllable words or end with unstressed syllables like -e, -el, -en, -er or -on: kopp - koppar, hund - hundar, pojke - pojkar, fågel - fåglar
• -er or -r, the third declension, is mainly loan words and often several syllables long. Mainly. Also, both utrum and neutrum nouns are in this group. Here we find for example: telefon - telefoner, ingenjör - ingenjörer, tapet - tapeter, gardin - gardiner. But there are also some words here that are fairly short and where the vowels change: hand - händer, fot - fötter, son - söner or land - länder. Nouns ending with a vowel often only gets an -r: sko - skor or fiende - fiender.
• -n, is for neutrum nouns (25 %, the ones you can put "ett" in front of) ending with a vowel. Äpple - äpplen, bi - bin, or arbete - arbeten. There are two irregular ones: öga - ögon and öra - öron.
• No suffix - neutrum nouns ending with a consonant. Barn - barn, hus - hus, träd - träd and so on.

[Devilcandy]

Bestämdhet ("definiteness"): definite or indefinite

So: we have our nouns, neatly divided in utrum and neutrum (en or ett). We know if they are singular or if they take one of the five different suffixes for plural. Now it's time to make them definite or indefinite.

Indefinite is easy: just leave them as they are. There is an indefinite article: en for utrum nouns (about 75 % as mentioned) or ett for neutrum nouns: en katt, ett bord.

To make them definite, however, we need to once again change or add suffixes.
Singular:
In most cases, the utrum nouns, add -n or -an. The more unusual neutrum nouns take -t, -et or in rare cases -at instead. Looking at examples from my earlier list:
   

• Utrum nouns: flicka - flickan, kvinna - kvinnan, blomma - blomman, lampa - lampan
• More utrum nouns: kopp - koppen, hund - hunden, pojke - pojken, fågel - fågeln
• Mixed cathegory (mainly utrum): telefon - telefonen, ingenjör - ingenjören, tapet - tapeten, gardin - gardinen, hand - handen, fot - foten, son - sonen, sko - skon, fiende - fienden or (neutrum) land - landet.
• Neutrum nouns ending with a vowel: äpple - äpplet, bi - biet, arbete - arbetet, sto - stoet, öga - ögat, öra - örat
• Neutrum nouns ending with a consonant: barn - barnet, hus - huset, träd - trädet, berg - berget, bord - bordet

Plural:
The first, second AND third declensions, that is utrum nouns ending with -a or short one-syllable utrum nouns, or ones ending with -e, -el, -en or -on, or the mixed group of borrowed utrum/neutrum nouns, so a very large group (I'd say giant-sized rather than troll-sized), end with -na when plural and definite. When in doubt, go for -na. It's like Emil with a bag of incendiaries, just carpet-bomb.
 

• Flickor - flickorna, kvinnor - kvinnorna, blommor - blommorna, lampor - lamporna
• Koppar - kopparna, hundar - hundarna, pojkar - pojkarna, fåglar - fåglarna
• Telefoner - telefonerna, ingenjörer - ingenjörerna, tapeter - tapeterna, gardiner - gardinerna, händer - händerna, fötter - fötterna, söner - sönerna, skor - skorna, fiender - fienderna

Yeah, they're getting fairly long. So: Singular indefinite: tapet or en tapet, singular definite: tapeten, plural indefinite: tapeter, plural definite: tapeterna.

As for neutrum nouns, they divide into two groups:

• The neutrum nouns ending with a vowel, that were made plural by adding -n, are made definite by the suffix -na: äpplen - äpplena, bin - bina, arbeten - arbetena.
• The two irregular ones, ögon and öron, adds -en: ögonen, öronen
• The neutrum nouns ending with a consonant, that were the same in singular and plural, are made definite by the suffix -en as well: barn - barnen, hus - husen, träd - träden

There are definitely exceptions, but I think these are the main groups. Will post about genitiv (possessive nouns) tomorrow.

[Solovei]

I was in London recently and found a large bookstore that sold books in Swedish, so I picked up some titles by Astrid Lindgren for practice! The complete set of Karlsson på taket (because I'd seen the cartoon a lot when I was growing up in Russia and I'd always wanted to read the original) and Ronja rövardotter (I think someone on this forum said I should read it, so...)

Hadn't gotten too into them yet, but I will soon, though it might take me a while to get through.

[Tap10lan]

Hi all, I get the impression there's quite an interest in learning Swedish, but that it's tricky to find times to get together to talk.

I am willing to participate in various activities of this kind, but the above thing applies to me, too.

HOWEVER, I'm Swedish, translator (English/German/Swedish), born, bred, and live in Sweden, have mixed background (Finnish mum, Austrian dad (Croatian minority group).
So I know a smattering of various languages.

I would be happy to help any of you if you want to have someone tweak text you produce, or just give feedback on it.

(As an example, almost everyone who knows English should try concatenating words when writing in Swedish. We, just like Finns, and Germans, like merging words to create new words! )

Anyway, let me know if I can help!

[MrNegative]

I'll probably join the learning group later on after I push through a bit more of Duolingo.

[Solovei]

Hi all, I get the impression there's quite an interest in learning Swedish, but that it's tricky to find times to get together to talk.

It is! I'd say that's one of our biggest hurdles right now; some of our members are in North America and others are in Finland/Sweden and I think one person was in Japan? There's not really a time when all of those people are awake, sadly XD But  we will figure something out, I promise!