"The woman drinks a cup of coffee."
Translation:Kvinnan dricker en kopp kaffe.
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658
The coffee is only the content of the cup. She drinks a cup filled with coffee. That way it's obvious that it's the cup that you need to use en or ett with.
There is a rule, a bit tricky but works with some exceptions. In your case, it's "en kopp" (a cup). The cup, is "koppen". Let's try this but with "ett". "Ett tåg" (a train). The train, is "tåget". So here is the explanation: If you put "the" in front of the word in english, and translate it to swedish, the word will end with either -en or -et. If the swedish word ends with -en, you put "en" in front of it if you mean a specific thing. If the swedish word ends with -et, you put "ett" in front of it if you mean a specific thing. This is just for singular though.
En and ett are grammatical genders: like in German (der, die, and das) or French (le and la).
Except that in Swedish, masculine and feminine words have a long time ago merged into the common gender (en-words), and there are a lot more of these than of the neuter gender (ett) words.
You just have to learn the gender along with the word, so "en kopp" and "ett tåg". If you have no clue with a particular word, go for en, as they are much more numerous.
805
So wait. You have gendered nouns and ungendered nouns, but there's only one gender? Do you still call it "gender"?
658
There is a Swedish phrase corresponding to what you want ("en kopp av kaffe"), but it means that the cup is made of coffee (not that it contains coffee). I've never managed to understand why you need to use the "of" in English.