The Swedish Teacher

Hej igen!

I have already received a number of questions and I want to thank everyone for contributing to this blog! As we say in Swedish:

Frågar man inget, får man inget veta.

One reader wants to know the rules for constructing plural of the noun. His question is this:

“Can you do something on plurals, and how we know which ending to add to a word?

If you could have these for the indefinite and definite forms that would be very helpful! “

5 noun groups – declensions

The nouns in Swedish can be sorted into five different groups or “declensions” as we also can call them.

1. In the first declension we find en-words (nouns with gender en) that end with an -a. This is a quite large group with common words as:

en blomma

(a flower)

en lampa

(a lamp)

en kvinna

(a woman)

en flaska

(a bottle)

en väska

(a bag)

All words in this group will look like this in plural form:

blommor

lampor

kvinnor

flaskor

väskor

As you can see, what you need to do to create the plural form is removing the -a and ad -or. If you want to create the definite form (bestämd form), the flowers, the bottles, you ad -na. Now it looks like this:

blommorna

lamporna

kvinnorna

flaskorna

väskorna

2. In the second declension there are mainly one-syllable nouns with gender en. Common words that fit into this group are:

en bil

(a car)

en kopp

(a cup)

en hund

(a dog)

en stol

(a chair)

en säng

(a bed)

In this group we will also find a number of other nouns that ends with a unstressed -e, -el, -en, -er or -on. Some examples of these words are:

en pojke, en bulle

(a boy, a cinnamon roll)

en cykel, en fågel

(a bike, a bird)

en öken

(a desert)

en syster, en vinter

(a sister)

en morgon

(a morning)

This is what the words in the second group look like in plural form:

bilar

koppar

hundar

stolar

sängar

pojkar

bullar

cyklar

fåglar

öknar

systrar

vintrar

morgnar

So, you can see that the plural ending for this group is -ar. You might also have noticed already that the words with an unstressed -e, -el, -en, -er or -on loses the -e or -o in plural. For plural definite form we ad -na just like in the first declension. Then we end up with:

bilarna, kopparna, hundarna, stolarna,  sängarna, pojkarna, bullarna, cyklarna, fåglarna, öknarna, systrarna, vintrarna and morgnarna

3. In the third declension there are words like en polis, en biljett and en telefon: and what do they have in common? Well they are all loan words as they originally come from another language. Many of the words in this group consists of several syllables. More examples:

en familj

( family)

en cigarett

(a cigarette)

en ingenjör

(an engineer)

To create the plural form of the nouns in this group we ad -er. Like this:

poliser

biljetter

telefoner

familjer

ingenjörer

Again, to create the definite form plural we ad -na at the end of the word. Like this:

poliserna

biljetterna

telefonerna

familjerna

ingenjörerna

The words are starting to get quite long now, right?   It is also worth mentioning that some of the words in this group get a so called “omljud” in plural which means that they change vowel. This happens to words that we use on a daily basis:

en hand               händer

(a hand)

en tand                tänder

(a tooth)

en son                   söner

(a son)

en fot                     fötter

(a foot)

4. Ok, enough with the en-words! In the fourth declension are a number of ett-words. The second thing they have in common is that they all end with a vowel. Hurray! Finally a rule that is easy to remember! Common words in this group are for example:

ett äpple

(an apple)

ett knä

(a knee)

ett konto

(an account)

ett meddelande

(a message)

ett arbete

(a job)

To express the plural form of these nouns we simply ad -n which will make our examples from above look like this:

äpplen

knän

konton

meddelanden

arbeten

It is worthy of note that if you are not familiar with the Swedish plural rules, or think that äpple is an en-word, you might think that äpplen means “the apple”. To create the definite form plural out of the words in the fourth group we will have to ad -a so we get:

äpplena

(the apples)

knäna

(the knees, my knees)

kontona

(the accounts)

meddelandena

(the messages)

arbetena

(the jobs)

5. All right, one more group to go – the fifth declension. (By this time in a classroom you would have been in coma!) Luckily, the fifth group is the one that is the easiest to remember. The rule is simple: ett-words ending with a consonant. A few examples:

ett hus

(a house)

ett barn

(a child)

ett rum

(a room)

ett problem

(a problem)

ett år

Ok, so what do we have to do to turn these guys into plural form? The answer is:nothing! One might think that the Swedes ran out plural endings or something. Anyway, this is what our examples look like in plural:

hus

(houses)

barn

(children)

rum

(rooms)

problem

(problems)

år

(years)

To make definite form we ad -en. Like this:

husen

barnen

rummen

problemen

åren

Congratulations for reading this far! Now you can practice your new skills by taking this test: http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=do-you-know-swedish-plural-forms

Sara the Swedish Teacher

Report abuse »

Tags: plural, reader's question

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Grammar, Plural of nouns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.