Swedish Nouns

Nouns

Nouns are words that name a person, place, or thing. All nouns in Swedish belong to either a common or a neuter gender. The gender of the noun affects the form of any adjectives related to it, as well as the definite and indefinite article used with the noun.

There are several different ways to form the plural of a Swedish noun and they will be shown later in the lesson. First we'll talk about using the definite and indefinite articles with nouns.

Indefinite Article

The indefinite article, a or an, is used to indicate a non-specific noun, or a noun used in a general sense. As in English, the indefinite article precedes the noun. For common nouns the indefinite article in Swedish is en and for neuter nouns it is ett.

Definite Article

The definite article, the in English, is appended to the noun in Swedish.

For common singular nouns that end in a consonant, append en to the noun. If a common singular noun ends in a vowel, append n to the end of the noun.

For neuter nouns append et to the end of the noun.

For both common and neuter plural nouns, append na to the plural form of the noun.

The following table show some examples of using the definite article with nouns. More examples are shown in the Plural of Nouns section.

Plural of Swedish Nouns

Nouns in Swedish have one of five different plural endings: or, ar, er, en, or no plural form.

Plural form -or

All nouns in this category belong to the common gender. Most nouns that end in a belong to this category. A few nouns that end in a consonant also belong to this category.

For the plural form of the noun, the final a is dropped and or is added to the end of the word. The following table shows an example.

The following is an example of a noun in this category that ends in a consonant.

Plural form -ar

All nouns in this category belong to the common gender, except finger which is neuter.

The following table shows the different forms of the noun arm.

Plural form -(e)r

This category contains both common and neuter nouns. Some nouns in this category change their stem vowel in the plural form as well.

The following table shows the different forms of the common gender noun sko.

The following table shows the different forms of the common noun hand, which is an example of a common gender noun whose vowel changes in the plural form.

The following table shows the different forms of the common noun land, which is an example of a neuter noun whose vowel changes in the plural form.

Plural form -(e)n

There are only neuter words in this category.

Plural form (-)

There are both common and neuter nouns in this category. There is no plural ending though sometimes there is a vowel change. Here is an example of a neuter noun in this category.

Here is an example of a common noun in this category that also has a vowel change in the plural form.

Possessive Form of Nouns

The possessive form, or genitive case, of Sedish nouns is similar to English, except no apostrophe is used.

The Human Body

Here are some Swedish words for the parts of the human body, along with the indefinite article. remember en is used with common gender nouns and ett is used with neuter nouns. The plural form of the nouns is also shown.

More Swedish words for the parts of the body can be found in the The Human Body vocabulary lesson.