Swedish language question. Prefix / suffix?

Question

I'm currently learning Swedish. I'm quite into it, doing and hour to two most days. I'm using 'GoSwedish' youtube videos and ipod apps and 'gengo' flashcards, a phrasebook and I have a 'teach yourself swedish audio cd/workbook' for later on. Basic vocabulary and memorizing phrases is easy. But I'm having a few grammatical understanding problems, and it's important to me that I understand and not just memorise.

I've found things on the internet talking about 'neuter' and 'common gender' but I don't really understand that, most definitions I find seem to be written for academics and not very layman friendly. Can someone explain the difference in simple terms for me please?

Relating to the previous question, Can someone please explain the rule to whether we use 'ett' or 'det' or 'en' or 'den'? It's confusing having several different ways of saying something coming from being used to saying 'a' or 'it' for everything.

Is there a rule for adding en/et to the end of a word to make that word plural? Or is this just set depending on individual words and learnt?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Neuter gender = 'ett' nouns

Common gender = 'en' nouns



A suffix is a word ending, such as English plural -s, -ing, -ed, -ment etc. (boys, playing, played, catchment). It is 'fixed' to the end of the word, and forms part of that word. With Swedish nouns, you put them into the definite form by adding the suffix -et for neuter nouns: huset, kriget (the house, the war), or -en/-n for common nouns: bilen, flickan (the car, the girl).



A prefix is a word beginning, such as English en-, bi- (enlighten, bicentennial). Likewise, the prefix is a part of a word, and is not written separately. Thus, 'the', 'a/an', 'en' or 'ett' before nouns are not prefixes, they are definite/indefinite articles. Prefixes in Swedish are used to form different related words, just like in English, but you won't need to worry about them when forming definite or plural forms of nouns.



As you will see from the previous answers and the Wikipedia article, you will need to learn, for every new noun, whether it's common or neuter, but also that there are certain patterns, which means that you can make educated guesses, in time. Some nouns are irregular, like mus (mouse):

en mus, musen, möss, mössen (a mouse, the mouse, mice, the mice)

Answer 2

Nice that you're teaching yourself Swedish!

The trouble with the articles 'en' and 'ett' is that like German and French there's no rule. The advantage with Swedish is that almost all words, 80% or so, are 'en' words. It pays to memorise the gender of the word when you learn it. This is easiest by declining the word thus the neuter word 'hus' is 'ett hus' (a house) and 'husset' (the house) and the non-neuter or uter word 'en bil' (a car) is 'bilen' (the car). If you remember 'bilen' then you don't have to think whether a 'bil' is 'en' or 'ett'.

All the 'en' words take an 'en' suffix to give them the definite form and all the 'ett' words an 'et' ending.

When you get into plurals and adjectives things get more complicated: generaly the plural 'article' is 'de' (prounounced 'dom') but you need to pluralise the adjective as well. In english we would just say "The red cars". But in Swedish one has to say 'De roda bilar" 'The reds cars'.

My advice is not to worry about the plurals just now but do try and get a basic grammar book from a university library. The best simple grammar I know is "A concise Swedish Grammar' used by the SFI language courses in Sweden.

Good luck!

Answer 3

English is a Germanic language, brought by the invading Saxons and taking over the local Celtic language still in use despite the previous Roman occupation. It then got an infusion of some French when the French Normans invaded the place but mostly some vocabulary. Latin and German have both prefixes and suffixes but they are different languages. The nearness of a country means nothing in that case, it was a language brought by succesful invaders which were a pain in the neck already during the Roman Empire and took over the place when the Empire failed. Besides, the Angles and Saxons were settled around Denmark at the time so closer than Italy or Spain.

Answer 4

There's no short cut, you'll have to learn them word by word.



In ancient times there was three genders (and still are in Närpes and some other archaic dialects, Norwegian and Icelandic), with masculine, feminine and neuter.



The only way to guess the right article is that words which are in plural -or, -ar and -er (eg. blommor "flowers", pojkar "boys", bananer "bananas") are nearly always "en-words" and words with a non-standard or n-ending plural (like hus "houses" or hjärtan "hearts") are most commonly "ett-wrods".

Answer 5

There is no rule for en/ett and den/det, "en" is connected to "den" and "ett" to "det"

For example: en hund, den hunden

ett hus, det huset



There is no rule for plural either, but adding "et" in the end of a word doesn't make it plural. To make the word plural, you have to add en/ar/or

Answer 6

There is no rule but en is more common.

en stol , stolen , stolar , stolarna

en flicka , flickan , flickor , flickorna

en tavla , tavlan , tavlor , tavlorna

en pojke , pojken , pojkar ,pojkarna

en ros , rosen , rosor ,rosorna

en bil , bilen , bilar , bilarna



ett hus , huset, hus , husen

ett bord , bordet , bord , borden