Posted by Anna Ikeda
In my last post, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I showed you a Swedish noun with a “real” gender. A noun that has both a male and a female version. That word was “skådespelare” which means an “actor”.
This is actually a bit similar to what happens in English as well. We have an actor and an actress. A waiter and a waitress. A priest and a priestess. An emperor and an empress.
While this not exactly what happens in Swedish, the concept is indeed somewhat similar. The difference is that there are many more words in Swedish that have both a feminine and a masculine version than in English.
You’ve seen that already happen with words describing nationalities, or at least regional origins of people.
Remember “skånska” - a lady from Skåne? And “samiska” – a female Sami?
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
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.
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