Swedish grammar is the study of the grammar of the Swedish language.

Swedish is descended from Old Norse. Swedish grammar is much less inflected than Old Norse was, though. Modern Swedish nouns are almost unchanged with respect to case, it no longer conjugates verbs based on person or number, and it has dropped one of the original three genders, but still uses some inflection with nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Word order is fairly fixed — generally subject-verb-object is the order of a declarative sentence, while a question sentence is verb-subject-object. An unusual feature is that a sentence beginning with an adverbial phrase (e.g. "In the morning", "Frequently"), also inverts subject and verb, the same as a question would.

Contents

1 Nouns 1.1 Plural forms 1.2 Articles and definite forms 2 Pronouns 3 Adjectives 4 Numerals 4.1 Cardinal numbers 4.2 Ordinal numbers 4.3 Function 5 Verbs 6 Adverbs 7 Prepositions 8 Word order

Nouns

Nouns come in two grammatical genders: common and neuter. Old Swedish formerly had masculine and feminine genders in place of common; some old phrases and ceremonial uses preserve these archaic forms. Noun gender is largely arbitrary and must be memorised.

There is a limited grammatical case system: pronouns have distinct nominative, accusative, and genitive forms. Regular nouns are alike in nominative and accusative; the genitive is formed regularly by adding -s (after the definite article, if the noun is definite). (This case system is nearly identical to that used in English)

Plural forms

Nouns form the plural in a variety of ways:

It is customary to classify regular Swedish nouns into five declensions based on their plural indefinite endings: -or, -ar, -er, -n, and unchanging nouns.

• All nouns of common gender ending in a add -r and change the a to o. For example, flicka (girl), flickor (girls).
• Most nouns of common gender not ending in a add either -ar, -er, or (rarely) -r. While -ar is slightly more common, there is no reliable rule to determine which suffix to use. Examples: växt (plant), växter (plants); lök (onion), lökar (onions).
• All neuter nouns ending in a vowel add -n. For example: äpple (apple), äpplen (apples).
• All neuter nouns ending in a consonant are unchanged in the plural. For example: barn (child) or barn (children).

There are also some irregular nouns — their number is not great, but they are some of the most commonly used words. Mildly irregular nouns are common nouns that are unchanged in the plural, nouns that double a consonant and shorten a vowel in the plural, etc. Certain nouns borrowed from Latin use Latin inflections. A small class of irregular nouns consist of those that mutate a back vowel of the singular form to a front vowel in the plural. Some of these also change the vowel and consonant lengths also, or add some sort of suffix, or both. The cognates of these mutating nouns in other Germanic languages are often similary irregular. Example: gås (goose), gäss (geese); man (man), män (men).

Articles and definite forms

The definite article in Swedish is a suffix, while the indefinite article is a separate word preceding the noun. This structure of the articles is shared by the Scandinavian languages. Articles differ in form depending on the gender and number of the noun.

The indefinite article is "en" for common nouns, and "ett" for neuter nouns, e.g. en flaska (a bottle), ett brev (a letter). The definite article is generally the suffixes "-(a)n" or "-(e)n" for common nouns, and "-(e)t" for neuter nouns. There are, however, other possibilities.

The 5 declensions may be named -or, -ar, -er, -en, and null after their respective plural indefinite endings. Each noun has 4 forms: singular/plural, and definite/indefinite. So these 20 examples cover all regular Swedish noun forms:

Declension	singular indef.	singular def.	plural indef.	plural def.
1st (-or)	en flaska	flaskan	flaskor	flaskorna
2nd (-ar)	en buske	busken	buskar	buskarna
3rd (-er)	en minut	minuten	minuter	minuterna
4th (-en)	ett vittne	vittnet	vittnen	vittnena
5th ( - )	ett brev	brevet	brev	breven

Pronouns

The Swedish pronoun system is almost identical to that of English. Pronouns inflect for person, number, and, in the third person singular, gender. Differences with English include the inclusion in Swedish of a reflexive pronoun "sig" for third-person reflexive, and the maintenance of distinct 2nd person singular, plural, and objective forms which have all merged to "you" in English, while the third person plurals are becoming merged in Swedish instead.

The Swedish pronouns are:

English	subjective	objective	possessive
I	jag	mig	min/mitt/mina
you (singular)	du	dig	din/ditt/dina
he	han	honom	hans
she	hon	henne	hennes
it (common)	den	den	dess
it (neuter)	det	det	dess
we	vi	oss	vår/vårt/våra
you (plural)	ni	er	er/ert/era
they	de*	dem*	deras
(reflexive)	-	sig	sin/sitt/sina

^*"de" (they) and "dem" (them) are both pronounced "dom" in speech, and occasionally spelled that way in casual writing. Note also that mig, dig, sig are pronounced as if written "mej", "dej", "sej", and sometimes spelled that way for slang effect.

Adjectives

The Swedish adjectives are declined according to the gender, number, and definiteness of the noun. Nouns of the common gender in singular indefinite form get the undeclined form of the adjective. Nouns of the neuter gender in singular indefinite form generally get the suffix -t.

En stor elefant - A large elephant (stor - large)

Ett stort lejon - A large lion

Nouns in plural or definite form, or both, get the suffix -a.

En lång man - A tall man (lång - tall)

Den långa mannen - The tall man

Långa män - Tall men

De långa männen - The tall men

Numerals

Cardinal numbers

The numbers from zero to twelve in Swedish are:

noll, ett, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio, elva, tolv

The number 1 is the same as the indefinite article, as it inflects for a noun's gender. The Swedish numerals for 13 to 19 are below.

tretton, fjorton, femton, sexton, sjutton, arton, nitton

The numerals for multiples of ten afterwards from 20 to 90 are as follows:

tjugo, trettio, fyrtio, femtio, sextio, sjuttio, åttio, nittio

[to be completed]

Ordinal numbers

Function

Verbs

Verbs do not inflect for person or number. Other tenses are formed by combinations of auxiliary verbs with infinitives or a special form of the participle called the supine.

By one common system there are four classes of verbs, class I, II, III and IV.

In Class I verbs, the stem ends in -a, the present tense ends in -r, the past tense in -de, the supine in -t, and the past participle in -d. The infinitive is the same as the stem.

About 80% of all verbs in Swedish belong in Class I, which is the only productive verb class; i.e., all new verbs coming into Swedish will be of this class.

In the paradigm below the forms are the stem, infinitive, present tense, past tense, supine, and past participle. The imperative is the same as the stem.

kalla-, kalla, kallar, kallade, kallat, kallad (to call)

Class II has stems ending in a consonant, and adds -er in the present. The infinitive ends in -a.

lev-, leva, lever, levde, levt, levd (to live)

Class III has stems ending in a vowel that is not -a, and adds -r in the present. The infinitive is identical to the stem.

ske-, ske, sker, skedde, skett, skedd (to occur, happen)

Class IV is comprised of the Germanic strong verbs. Here is one example.

finn-, finna, finner, fann, funnit, funnen (to find)

As in all the Germanic languages, there are strong verbs, which change their vowel sounds in the various tenses. For most Swedish strong verbs that have a verb cognate in English or German, that cognate is also strong, for example, "stryka/streichen/strike":

	Infinitive	present	preterite	supine	past participle
Swedish	stryka (to cancel)	stryker	strök	strukit	struken
German	streichen (to strike)	streichen	strich		gestrichen
English	strike (to strike)	strike	struck		stricken

Adverbs

An adjective can be transformed into an adverb by adding the suffix "-t".

• tjock (thick, fat) -> tjockt (thickly)
• snabb (quick) -> snabbt (quickly)

Prepositions

Word order