Swedish grammar
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Swedish grammar is the study of the grammar of the Swedish language.
Swedish is descended from Old Norse. Swedish grammar is much less inflected than Old Norse was, though. Modern Swedish has dropped one of the original three genders, it no longer conjugates verbs based on person or number, and its nouns are almost unchanged with respect to case. Swedish still uses some inflection with nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Word order is fairly fixed — generally subject-verb-object is the order of a declarative sentence, while a question sentence is verb-subject-object. A distinct feature is that a sentence beginning with an adverbial phrase (e.g. "In the morning", "Frequently"), also inverts subject and verb, the same as a question would.
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Nouns
Nouns come in two grammatical genders: common and neuter. Old Swedish formerly had masculine and feminine genders in place of common; some old phrases and ceremonial uses preserve these archaic forms. Most adjectives retain a masculine form even in daily use: "Den stilige mannen/den stiliga kvinnan (the handsome man/the handsome woman). Noun gender is largely arbitrary and must be memorised.
There is a limited grammatical case system: pronouns have distinct nominative, accusative, and genitive forms. Regular nouns are alike in nominative and accusative; the genitive is formed regularly by adding -s (after the definite article, if the noun is definite). (This case system is nearly identical to that used in English)
Plural forms
Nouns form the plural in a variety of ways:
It is customary to classify regular Swedish nouns into five declensions based on their plural indefinite endings: -or, -ar, -er, -n, and unchanging nouns.
- All nouns of common gender ending in a add -r and change the a to o. For example, flicka (girl), flickor (girls). There are also a few exceptions, such as våg (wave), vågor (waves); toffel (slipper), tofflor (slippers); ros (rose), rosor (roses); åder (vein), ådror (veins).
- Most nouns of common gender not ending in a add either -ar, -er, or (rarely) -r. While -ar is slightly more common, there is no reliable rule to determine which suffix to use. Examples: växt (plant), växter (plants); lök (onion), lökar (onions). A few rules can be named, though, as nouns of common gender ending with -e or -ing belong to the second declension. In addition, endings -are and -iker belong to the fifth declension, -é, -else, -het, -(n)ad and -or to the third declension. Nouns of common gender ending -an do not inflect. Occasional exceptions are possible but few.
- All neuter nouns ending in a vowel add -n. For example: äpple (apple), äpplen (apples).
- All neuter nouns ending in a consonant are unchanged in the plural. For example: barn (child) or barn (children).
There are also some irregular nouns — their number is not great, but they are some of the most commonly used words. Mildly irregular nouns are common nouns that are unchanged in the plural, nouns that double a consonant and shorten a vowel in the plural, etc. Certain nouns borrowed from Latin use Latin inflections. A small class of irregular nouns consist of those that mutate a back vowel of the singular form to a front vowel in the plural. Some of these also change the vowel and consonant lengths also, or add some sort of suffix, or both. The cognates of these mutating nouns in other Germanic languages are often similary irregular. Examples: gås (goose), gäss (geese); man (man), män (men); mus (mouse), möss (mice).
Articles and definite forms
The definite article in Swedish is a suffix, while the indefinite article is a separate word preceding the noun. This structure of the articles is shared by the Scandinavian languages. Articles differ in form depending on the gender and number of the noun.
The indefinite article is "en" for common nouns, and "ett" for neuter nouns, e.g. en flaska (a bottle), ett brev (a letter). The definite article is generally the suffixes "-(a)n" or "-(e)n" for common nouns, and "-(e)t" for neuter nouns.
The 5 declensions may be named -or, -ar, -er, -en, and null after their respective plural indefinite endings. Each noun has 4 forms: singular/plural, and definite/indefinite. So these 20 examples cover all regular Swedish noun forms:
| Declension | singular indef. | singular def. | plural indef. | plural def. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st (-or) | en flaska | flaskan | flaskor | flaskorna |
| 2nd (-ar) | en buske | busken | buskar | buskarna |
| 3rd (-er) | en minut | minuten | minuter | minuterna |
| 4th (-en) | ett vittne | vittnet | vittnen | vittnena |
| 5th ( - ) | ett brev | brevet | brev | breven |
Pronouns
The Swedish pronoun system is almost identical to that of English. Pronouns inflect for person, number, and, in the third person singular, gender. Differences with English include the inclusion in Swedish of a reflexive pronoun "sig" for third-person reflexive, and the maintenance of distinct 2nd person singular, plural, and objective forms which have all merged to "you" in English, while the third person plurals are becoming merged in Swedish instead.
The Swedish pronouns are:
| English | subjective | objective | possessive |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | jag | mig | min/mitt/mina1 |
| thou | du | dig | din/ditt/dina1 |
| he | han | honom | hans |
| she | hon | henne | hennes |
| it (common) | den | den | dess |
| it (neuter) | det | det | dess |
| we | vi | oss | vår/vårt/våra1 |
| you | ni | er | er/ert/era1 |
| they | de2 | dem2 | deras |
| (reflexive) | - | sig | sin/sitt/sina1 |
1These possessive pronouns are inflected like adjectives, agreeing in gender, number, and definiteness with the item posessed. The other posessive pronouns are genitive forms that are unaffected by the item posessed.
2"de" (they) and "dem" (them) are both pronounced "dom" (/do:m/) in speech, and occasionally spelt that way in casual writing. Note also that mig, dig, sig are pronounced as if written "mej", "dej", "sej", and sometimes spelled that way.
Adjectives
The Swedish adjectives are declined according to the gender, number, and definiteness of the noun. Nouns of the common gender in singular indefinite form get the undeclined form of the adjective. Nouns of the neuter gender in singular indefinite form generally get the suffix -t.
- En stor elefant - A large elephant (stor - large)
- Ett stort lejon - A large lion
Nouns in plural or definite form, or both, get the suffix -a.
- En lång man - A tall man (lång - tall)
- Den långa mannen - The tall man (in Götaland spoken and in formal texts written in masculine form, långe)
- Långa män - Tall men
- De långa männen - The tall men
Note that the declined adjective and/or article often makes it possible to tell if a neuter noun is singular or plural.
- Ett stort ord - A big word
- Stora ord - Big words
Numerals
Cardinal numbers
The numbers from zero to twelve in Swedish are:
- noll, ett, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio, elva, tolv
The number 1 is the same as the indefinite article, as it inflects (en/ett) for a noun's gender. The Swedish numerals for 13 to 19 are below.
- tretton, fjorton, femton, sexton, sjutton, arton, nitton
The numerals for multiples of ten afterwards from 20 to 90 are as follows:
- tjugo, trettio, fyrtio, femtio, sextio, sjuttio, åttio, nittio
[to be completed]
Ordinal numbers
One to twelve:
- första, andra, tredje, fjärde, femte, sjätte, sjunde, åttonde, nionde, tionde, elfte, tolfte
Thirteen to nineteen:
Numerals, but with an additional -de ending, eg: trettonde, fjortonde
20 to 90
- As numerals, but with an -nde ending, eg: Tjugonde, Trettionde
Function
Verbs
Verbs do not inflect for person or number. They inflect for present and past tense, and imperative and infinitive mood. Other tenses are formed by combinations of auxiliary verbs with infinitives or a special form of the participle called the supine. In total there are 6 spoken active-voice forms for each verb: Infinitive, Imperative, Present, Preterite, Supine, Past Participle.
Verbs may also take the passive voice. The passive voice is formed by appending "s" to the main verb in its current tense. Perhaps because this is so simple in Swedish compared to English, Swedish uses the passive voice more frequently than English does.
Conjugating verbs
By one common system there are four classes of verbs, class I, II, III and IV.
In Class I verbs, the stem ends in -a, the present tense ends in -r, the past tense in -de, the supine in -t, and the past participle in -d. The infinitive is the same as the stem.
About 80% of all verbs in Swedish belong in Class I, which is the only productive verb class; i.e., all new verbs coming into Swedish will be of this class.
In the paradigm below the forms are the stem, infinitive, present tense, past tense, supine, and past participle. The imperative is the same as the stem.
- kalla-, kalla, kallar, kallade, kallat, kallad (to call)
Class II has stems ending in a consonant, and adds -er in the present. The infinitive ends in -a.
- lev-, leva, lever, levde, levt, levd (to live)
Class III has stems ending in a vowel that is not -a, and adds -r in the present. The infinitive is identical to the stem.
- ske-, ske, sker, skedde, skett, skedd (to occur, happen)
Class IV is comprised of the Germanic strong verbs. Here is one example.
- finn-, finna, finner, fann, funnit, funnen (to find)
As in all the Germanic languages, there are strong verbs, which change their vowel sounds in the various tenses. For most Swedish strong verbs that have a verb cognate in English or German, that cognate is also strong, for example, "stryka/streichen/strike":
| Infinitive | present | preterite | supine | past participle | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Swedish | stryka (to iron, to bar) | stryker | strök | strukit | struken |
| German | streichen (to cancel) | streichen | strich | gestrichen | |
| English | strike (to strike) | strike | struck | stricken |
Supine form
The Supine (supinum) form is used in Swedish to form the composite past form of a verb.
This is best shown by example:
- Simple past: I burned the dinner - Jag brände maten (using preterite)
- Composite past: I have burned the dinner - Jag har bränt maten (using supine)
- Past participle: The dinner is burnt - Maten är bränd (using past participle)
The supine form is used after ha (to have). In English this form is normally merged with the past participle, or the preterite, but in Swedish they remain separate.
Adverbs
An adjective can be transformed into an adverb by adding the suffix "-t".
- tjock (thick, fat) -> tjockt (thickly)
- snabb (quick) -> snabbt (quickly)
Prepositions
Syntax
Being a Germanic language, Swedish syntax shows similarities to both English and German. Like English, Swedish has a Subject Verb Object basic word order, but like German, utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs, adverbial phrases and dependent clauses. Adjectives precede the noun they determine. Nouns qualifying other nouns are almost always compounded on the fly, (as with German, but less so with English), with the last noun being the head.
A general word-order template may be drawn for a Swedish sentence, where each part, if it does appear, appears in this order. (Source -- Swedish For Immigrants level 3).
Clause A
- Fundament
- Verb1
- Subject (if not fundament)
- Clausal Adverb
- Verb2 (infinitive or supinum)
- Object
- Spatial Adverb
- Temporal Adverb
if the sentence has a subordinate clause, it will continue from the above:
Clause B
- Conjunction
- Subject
- Clausal Adverb
- Verb1
- Verb2 (infinitive or supinum)
- Object
- Spatial Adverb
- Temporal Adverb
The "Fundament" is either an adverb, or adverbial phrase, that may be spatial, temporal, or clausal, or the subject.
