Nouns: Grammatical gender

It can be quite hard to learn a completely new language. One of the most difficult things when learning Swedish is dealing with Swedish nouns. Particularly because all the nouns belong to a secret club. Or rather, they are in one of two different 'noun-clubs'. When you are about to use a noun, you need to know which of the clubs this particular noun is a member of.

Because that's what determines which of these little words you should choose: En. Ett. These tiny words show which club a noun belongs to. We call them indefinite articles. When you use a noun, you need to know which of the clubs the noun is a member of, and choose the appropriate article.

If you are used to Swedish, you'll hear which of the two indefinite articles sound right: En ros Ett sjö En träd Ett lejon Nah, some of those were wrong, weren't they? We'll swap the two middle ones: En sjö. Ett träd. That's better. Now the words are sorted according to which club they belong to.

But why is it like this? Why are nouns members of one of two clubs? Well, it's a bit like gender. Just as people often organize themselves into men and women, nouns also organize themselves according to gender. A long time ago, Swedish nouns had three genders to choose from: Male, or masculine.

Female, or feminine. And neutral gender, neuter. Nouns like boat and chair belonged to the male club: masculine gender. While nouns like sun, clock, and human all belonged to the female club: feminine gender. And there was a neutral gender, for nouns like tree, lion, and child.

But as time passed, the nouns got tired of making a difference between masculine and feminine. So those two clubs merged, and formed one common gender, appropriately called the common gender. So today the Swedish language has two genders: common and neuter. To each gender belongs one definite article, and one indefinite article. Like this: En den Ett det If you think the terms common and neuter are too clumsy for you, you may call them n-gender and t-gender instead.

That works just as well. If you happen to run into a noun, and don't know what gender it is, make a guess, and treat it as n-gender. Then you have a 75 per cent chance of being correct, because most Swedish nouns are of the n-gender. Especially words that describe people, and some of the more intelligent animals, are mostly n-gender: En... kvinna, man, flicka, pojke, chef, läkare, hjälte, häst, hund, katt, björn, älg, tiger.

But there are exceptions to this: barn, lamm, geni, vittne, bi... Ett... So, the rule is unfortunately not always valid. And there aren't many other rules either... But hang on a moment, you might be thinking now...

We did say that masculine and feminine are no longer used. But still we choose pronouns based on these genders, right? Like this? Här kommer en kvinna. Hon går långsamt.

En pappa handlar mat. Han glömde mjölken. Titta på hunden. Den fryser så den skakar. Yes, and if you happen to know that dog, and you know it's a female, then you might put it like this: Titta på hunden.

Hon fryser så hon skakar. On the other hand, you'd never say: Här kommer en kvinna. Den går långsamt. En pappa handlar mat. Den glömde mjölken.

Because, if we know what biological gender a human or higher order animal has, then we'll use that to determine which pronoun to use. But not when we chose the definite or indefinite article.