- Forum >
- Topic: Swedish >
- "Ett barn"
43 Comments
546
'en' is an indefinite article used for masculin and feminin words in swedish (grammatical gender rather than real gender). It translates as "a"-"an" in english.
'ett' is also indefinite article amd will translate also as "a"-"an" but is used for neutral words (ett barn(child) for instance). There is no equivalent in french or english but if you are familiar with dutch or german, they have also neutral words such as huis in dutch (house). Difference is in german and dutch, is that you can't really see it with the undetermined article but with the determined article (such as "das" in german or "het" in dutch).
1446
Tips & notes are at the beginning of each skill (a few skills don't have any) but unfortunately they can't be seen from mobile platforms. Here's a link to this one: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/sv/Basics-2
1446
Historical reasons. We used to have three genders just like German (neuter, feminine, masculine) but fem. and masc. collapsed into one (en gender or common gender today). The old genders go way back in history.
1446
Non native speakers often perceive our long a:s as sounding like o, but I hear a clear a here. You'll hear the difference better with practice.
1446
In Swedish and English, we have a gender neutral word barn / 'child', which translate each other. In Spanish for instance, they use the word niño for this purpose although it also means 'boy'. So if you're translating between Spanish and English, niño translates as either child or boy, and it's the same if you translate from Spanish into Swedish, niño means both barn and pojke. But if you translate between English and Swedish, barn only means 'child' and pojke is only 'boy'.