Swedish Nouns
Substantiv
How to learn Swedish nouns
Before speaking further about nouns, we must clarify noun/substantiv terminology. The noun in the Swedish language is called substantiv. As the name suggests, substantiv, “substance” refers to a material thing. Everything that we see, touch, and think about, even abstract,immaterial things, belong to the category of the noun word group.
Nouns in Swedish has articles, similar to many other European languages, and English also has articles that are used with a noun. In English, we have indefinite articles “a” and “an” We use “a” with nouns that start with consonants, for example, a book, and the article “an” with nouns that begin with vowels, for example, an apple. English also has the definite article “the” which applies to all nouns regardless of how the word starts, for example the book and the apple.
Similarly, there are indefinite and definite articles in Swedish. En and ett are indefinite articles, and den, det and de are definite articles. Yet, there is also a different implementation of these articles.
SINGULAR | PLURAL | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
OBESTÄMD/ INDEFINITE | BESTÄMD/DEFINITE | OBESTÄMD/INDEFINITE | BESTÄMD/DEFINITE | |
1 | EN BLOMMA | BLOMMAN | BLOMMOR | BLOMMORNA |
2 | EN TIDNING | TIDNINGEN | TIDNINGAR | TIDNINGARNA |
3 | EN FAMILJ | FAMILJEN | FAMILJER | FAMILJERNA |
4 | ETT ARBETE | ARBETET | ARBETEN | ARBETENA |
5 | ETT TÅG | TÅGET | TÅG | TÅGEN |