"A glass of water"
Translation:Ett glas vatten
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The words differ, some substantives have en, some have ett. I don't think there's a definitive rule for that, at least none was ever taught for us. Ett slott, ett ägg, ett äpple, en kniv, en fågel.
That's confusing! I thought "ett" is only used if the noun is fem/masc.. In German i. e. "the glas" is neuter. ("das Glas")
But how do you know whether an object has a gender or is considered neuter?
1012
Every noun has a grammatical gender assigned to it. The neuter indefinite article is "ett", the common gender one is "en". It is highly advisable that one learn the gender along with a new noun.
- 1012
Not at all, you're conflating grammatical gender and "natural" gender, when the two actually have little to nothing to do with each other. If the word "gender" concerning nouns bothers you, you can also remember it as all nouns being in one of two categories: "ett-words" (commonly referred to as neuter gendered nouns) and "en-words" (common gender nouns). When you learn a new noun, you have to learn in which of the two categories it is. Here, it is "ett glas vatten" because "glas" is an ett-word.
'Glas' is spoken with a long 'a'.
'Glass' is spoken with a short 'a'.
The longer the word the shorter the sound. It's the same in English. 'Hoped' and 'hopped' for example. However, English doesn't distinguish between words on the length of 'a', so this can be quite difficult to remember when speaking Swedish.