"Ett äpple"
Translation:An apple
43 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Just so it helps :) There are two groups of nouns : which go with EN ( general gender. Yeah, boy and girl is general gender) and with ETT (neutral gender. "A child" for example). 3/4 of words are mosty En words. But you better learn articles, but it can also help: 1. Most of nouns meaning humans and animals have EN article. (Flicka, Man, Hund, Katt) EXCEPT Ett barn (child) , Ett lejon (lion) 2. Most of nouns meaning days of the week, months, seasons and celebrations go with EN article. (Måndag -Monday, jul - Christmas, höst - autumn) 3. most of nouns ending with -ad, -are, -dom, -else, -het, -ing, -ion, -ism, -lek go with EN (En lärARE - teacher, en statION - station. etc.) 4. Most of nouns ending with -ek, -em, -iv, -um belongs to ETT article (Ett museUM, ett systEM) 5. Names of cities, towns, counties, continents go with ETT (Ett Stockholm, ett Europa - Europe)
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Do I understand correctly that in Swedish the undefined articles (a, an) do also express gender, not only defined ones?
I read on Wikipedia Swedish grammar that The indefinite article, which is only used in the singular, is "en" for common nouns, and "ett" for neuter nouns, e.g. en flaska (a bottle), ett brev (a letter). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_grammar#Articles_and_definite_forms
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Pretty much. I think there are (for Danish, at least) certain rules of thumb (like e.g. in French words that end in 'e' are mostly feminine) but they're long, and I'm pretty sure not all words follow them, so you'd just be better off remembering the article along with the word itself while learning it.
You mean å and ä? It's like asking a question is there sny difference between y snd x... it's a completely different letter.
There are some tendencies, but they aren't all that helpful. Read about them here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/6329293
Most helpful is probably the fact that 75-80% are en gender words.
Please try my explanation for beginners in here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/26420394
If that doesn't help, do get back and we'll see what we can do. :)