List of nouns with vowel change (umlaut) in the plural.
Some of you might have encountered plurals such as bok böcker, similar to English goose geese, so I thought I’d post this list I made a while back. I think it’s near-complete. For historical reasons, all these words are en-words, except for land and stånd. Beware of that some of these words are very uncommon so you will likely never encounter them, however, many are extremely common.
For those of you who can’t see the table, it’s available here: http://i.imgur.com/Zvstdz9.png
28 Comments
Nice! Also note that the pronunciation of the G in "gås" and "gäss" is different. "Gås" is pronounced with a hard G, while the G in "gäss" is pronounced like the Swedish J.
Interesting! Must admit that I would never say "spänger" but "spångar" though.
By the way, you can also say "en bok - flera bokar", but then it means "one beech - several beeches" (Fagus Sylvatica).
Yes, both plural forms are given in the dictionary, so both are listed here.
Wow! this one is very helpful since I just started to learn basic Swedish, Tack!
Swedish native speaker here. It's a great list. Just a few comments:
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"Spänner" and "spänger" are not used anymore (apart from possibly in some dialects). Use "spannar" and "spångar" instead!
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"Ständer" feels very old fashioned even though you can still happen upon it in expressions or old songs. "Stånd" in plural feels more natural. (Also note that the most used meaning of "stånd" is a stand, as on a market.)
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"Stav" also means staff (typically of wood or metal) but with the plural "stavar". I would say a lot of Swedes wouldn't even know the meaning listed here. It's very uncommon.
Thanks for the effort! However, I cannot see the embedded picture and cannot reach the page as the link is blocked in my country! Any other way to help me with the list? Thanks!
http://s16.postimg.org/wn60a2aph/swedish.png I have saved the picture to my computer then reuploaded it on a different site, try this one
It’s an embedded picture. Perhaps it doesn’t work on mobile. In that case, try this: http://i.imgur.com/Zvstdz9.png
This is very interesting, considering letter (like in the alphabet, not the other one) in German is called "Buchstabe" (literally book-staff, like the Swedish one), while staff/stick is called Stab. However when they turn to plural:
Buchstabe - Buchstaben
Stab - Stäbe
Funny that German does the vowel change in only one of these and Swedish in both.
