"De" or "dem"

Lina has been visiting a zoo. And after the visit, she's to give a presentation, and tell about what she saw and learned. Djuren stod innanför staket, men vi såg dom bra ändå: älgar, vargar och sälar. Dom fick mat medan vi var där. That wasn't too bad was it?

Now Lina is going to write the same story down, and recount the visit. Djuren stod innanför staket, men vi såg dom bra ändå: älgar, vargar och sälar. Dom fick mat medan vi var där. Look carefully at that little word: Dom You could write it just the way Lina has done here, the way you pronounce it. But really, these are two different words.

They sound the same, most of the time, but in more formal-- more proper writing, we usually write them differently - like this! Dem. De. So what's the difference then - both sound the same, and they mean the same thing too... ? Or, do they really?

Noooo. Not exactly the same thing. The two words differ, in just the same way as the following word pairs: Jag - mig. Du - dig. Hon - henne.

Han - honom. Hen - hen. Vi - oss. Ni - er. Dom - dom.

Do you recognise these words? They are words we use instead of names, for people, animals and things, in a sentence. They are personal pronouns: Let's bring back two pieces of Lina's text again, and let's replace some of these difficult words, to one of the other pronouns, and see what happens. Listen to this! Vi såg honom bra ändå.

Han fick mat. Vi såg er bra ändå. Ni fick mat. Vi såg dem bra ändå. Dom fick mat.

Do you see the pattern? Hit the pause button, and look at the highlighted words in each pair of sentences. How are they related? The thing that determines which pronoun we choose, is the role the person plays in the sentence. In the second sentence in each example, the pronoun plays the leading role in the sentence.

The person that the pronoun is referring to is active, and does something. We say that the pronoun is the subject of these sentences. And then, these are the pronouns to choose from: Jag, Du, Hon, Han, Hen, Vi, Ni, Dom. But, if the pronoun instead refers to the receiving end of whatever is going on, then we say that the pronoun is in the object position. Then, these are the pronouns to choose from: Mig, Dig, Honom, Henne, Hen, Oss, Er, Dom.

And it's this last one that's a bit tricky, since here both of the pronouns sound the same most of the time. There are several tricks you can use, to determine which of the two forms to choose. One is, to simply replace the word with another pronoun. Try for yourself with we, or he, and see if it suits best to use the subject form or the object form. Like this!