The short answer
Swedish has two grammatical genders: utrum, whose nouns take en, and neutrum, whose nouns take ett. Roughly three nouns in four are en-words. No rule covers every noun, so gender is learnt with the word — but a set of endings is reliable enough to be worth memorising, and it settles the majority of the words you will meet.
Swedish has two grammatical genders: common (en) and neuter (ett). Every noun belongs to one of these groups.
About 75% of nouns are en-words and 25% are ett-words. Unfortunately, there's no reliable rule, you need to learn the gender with each noun.
Endings that are reliably en-words
| Ending | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| -are | en lärare | a teacher |
| -else | en rörelse | a movement |
| -het | en möjlighet | a possibility |
| -ing / -ning | en tidning | a newspaper |
| -ion / -tion | en station | a station |
| -dom | en sjukdom | an illness |
| -lek | en storlek | a size |
| -nad | en byggnad | a building |
Endings that are reliably ett-words
| Ending | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| -ande / -ende | ett leende | a smile |
| -eri | ett bageri | a bakery |
| -um | ett museum | a museum |
| -gram | ett program | a programme |
| -iv | ett perspektiv | a perspective |
In a sentence
en bok
a book (common)
ett hus
a house (neuter)
en flicka
a girl (common)
ett barn
a child (neuter)
What learners get wrong
Learning the noun without its article.
Say instead: en bil, ett hus
Gender is not recoverable from the bare word, and it decides the definite form, the plural and every adjective in front of it. A noun learnt without its article has to be learnt again.
Assuming living things are always en-words.
Say instead: ett barn, ett lejon
The tendency is real but it is only a tendency. Barn (child) and lejon (lion) are both neuter.
Questions people ask
- Is there a rule for en and ett in Swedish?
- Not a complete one. Isof, the Swedish language institute, states plainly that there is no rule that decides the gender of every noun, which is why dictionaries list it. What does exist is a set of endings — -are, -het, -ning, -tion and others are en-words; -ande, -eri, -um are ett-words — and those cover a large share of the vocabulary.
- What proportion of Swedish nouns are en-words?
- Around three quarters. Estimates published in Swedish reference material cluster between 75 and 80 percent, so guessing en when you have nothing else to go on is right more often than not — but it is a guess, not a rule.
- Does the gender change anything besides the article?
- Yes, and this is why it matters more than it looks. It decides the definite ending (bilen but huset), the plural (bilar but hus), the adjective (en stor bil but ett stort hus) and the pronoun (den but det). Get the gender wrong and four other things go wrong with it.
Sources
Usage checked against Isof, the Swedish government's language institute, and Svenska Akademien. Where usage is genuinely divided, this page says so rather than inventing a rule.