It’s time for a little bit of grammar today, don’t you agree? And this particular bit of grammar is always confusing for English speakers.

People, Swedish people naturally, will tell you that Swedish nouns are classed according to gender. And it’s all good, except when you try to find out exactly what gender those Swedish nouns have. In most languages, when talking about gender, you come up with the usual of masculine, feminine, and neuter. But not so in Swedish. Here, there are only two choices, and they are defined by these two indefinite articles: en and ett.

Every noun is either an “en” or an “ett” noun, and which is which you have to learn the hard way by memorizing the appropriate article together with the noun. Why? That pesky indefinite article will show you how make the correct form of the definite article. It also comes up in other grammatical issues, involving adjectives, for example.

But for now, let’s stick to nouns. Why this is called “gender” I’m not really sure, because while some Swedish nouns do have both masculine and feminine forms, the article in front of such nouns is the same in both cases.

So how does it look in practice? Like this for example:
en stol – a chair
en katt – a cat
en skola – a school
en pojke – a boy
en banan – a banana

And now let’s try some “ett” words:
ett hus – a house
ett bord – a table
ett kvitto – a receipt
ett äpple – an apple
ett barn – a child

When the article comes in front of the word, it’s more or less equivalent to the English “a” or “an”.
So how do you make a “the” in Swedish? Simple! Stick that “en” or “ett” at the end of the word. Take a look:

stolen – the chair
katten – the cat
bananen – the banana

It gets a bit funky when the word ends in a vowel. Then instead of “en” you only stick “n” at the end of the noun, like this:
skolan – the school
pojken – the boy

Of course, it wouldn’t be grammar if there weren’t exceptions to the above rule, but we will discuss those exceptions in a separate post.

And how does it work for “ett” words? Pretty much the same, you attach the article at the end of your nouns, except you drop one “t” and “ett” becomes “et”:
huset – the house
bordet – the table
barnet – the child

And when the word ends in a vowel? Then you simply attach only “t”, like this:
kvittot – the receipt
äpplet – the apple

See? It’s not that complicated, is it? One important thing to remember is that words denoting people are always “en” words. Except for that pesky exception, which you already saw above, which is “barn”:
ett barn – a child
barnet – the child

Other than that, there are no rules regarding which indefinite article comes with which noun, and it’s best to learn both the article and the noun at the same time.