Plural endings

Hej igen!
I have already received a number of questions and I want to thank everyone for contributing to this blog!
As we say in Swedish:
Frgar man inget, fr man inget veta.
One reader wants to know the rules for constructing plural of the noun. His question is this:
Can you do something on plurals, and how we know which ending to add to a word?
If you could have these for the indefinite and definite forms that would be very helpful!
5 noun groups declensions
The nouns in Swedish can be sorted into five different groups or declensions as we also can call them.
1. In the first declension we find en-words (nouns with gender en) that end with an -a. This is a quite large
group with common words as:
en blomma

en lampa

en kvinna

en flaska

en vska

(a flower)

(a lamp)

(a woman)

(a bottle)

(a bag)

All words in this group will look like this in plural form:
blommor
lampor
kvinnor
flaskor
vskor
As you can see, what you need to do to create the plural form is removing the a and ad -or. If you want
to create the definite form (bestmd form), the flowers, the bottles, you ad -na. Now it looks like this:
blommorna
lamporna
kvinnorna
flaskorna
vskorna
2. In the second declension there are mainly one-syllable nouns with gender en.Common words that fit
into this group are:

en bil

en kopp

en hund

en stol

en sng

(a car)

(a cup)

(a dog)

(a chair)

(a bed)

In this group we will also find a number of other nouns that ends with aunstressed -e, -el, -en, -er or -on.
Some examples of these words are:
en pojke, en bulle

en cykel, en fgel

en ken

(a boy, a cinnamon
roll)

(a bike, a bird)

(a desert)

en syster, en
vinter

en morgon
(a morning)

(a sister)

This is what the words in the second group look like in plural form:
bilar
koppar
hundar
stolar
sngar
pojkar
bullar
cyklar
fglar
knar
systrar
vintrar
morgnar
So, you can see that the plural ending for this group is -ar. You might also have noticed already that the
words with an unstressed -e, -el, -en, -er or -on loses the -e or -o in plural. For plural definite form we ad na just like in the first declension. Then we end up with:
bilarna, kopparna, hundarna, stolarna, sngarna, pojkarna, bullarna, cyklarna, fglarna, knarna,
systrarna, vintrarna and morgnarna
3. In the third declension there are words like en polis, en biljett and en telefon: and what do they have in
common? Well they are all loan words as they originally come from another language. Many of the words
in this group consists of several syllables. More examples:

en familj

en cigarett

en ingenjr

( family)

(a cigarette)

(an engineer)

To create the plural form of the nouns in this group we ad -er. Like this:
poliser
biljetter
telefoner
familjer
ingenjrer
Again, to create the definite form plural we ad -na at the end of the word. Like this:
poliserna
biljetterna
telefonerna
familjerna
ingenjrerna
The words are starting to get quite long now, right?
It is also worth mentioning that some of the words
in this group get a so called omljud in plural which means that they change vowel. This happens to
words that we use on a daily basis:
en hand
(a hand)

hnder

en tand

tnder

(a tooth)

en son

sner

en
fot

ftter

(a son)
(a foot)

4. Ok, enough with the en-words! In the fourth declension are a number of ett-words. The second thing
they have in common is that they all end with a vowel. Hurray! Finally a rule that is easy to remember!
Common words in this group are for example:
ett pple

ett kn

ett konto

ett meddelande

ett arbete

(an apple)

(a knee)

(an account)

(a message)

(a job)

To express the plural form of these nouns we simply ad -n which will make our examples from above look
like this:
pplen
knn
konton
meddelanden
arbeten
It is worthy of note that if you are not familiar with the Swedish plural rules, or think that pple is an enword, you might think that pplen means the apple. To create the definite form plural out of the words in
the fourth group we will have to ad -a so we get:
pplena

knna

kontona

meddelandena

arbetena

(the apples)

(the knees, my
knees)

(the accounts)

(the messages)

(the jobs)

5. All right, one more group to go the fifth declension. (By this time in a classroom you would have been
in coma!) Luckily, the fifth group is the one that is the easiest to remember. The rule is simple: ettwords ending with aconsonant. A few examples:
ett hus

ett barn

ett rum

ett problem

ett r

(a house)

(a child)

(a room)

(a problem)

(one year)

Ok, so what do we have to do to turn these guys into plural form? The answer is:nothing! One might think
that the Swedes ran out plural endings or something. Anyway, this is what our examples look like in plural:
hus

barn

rum

problem

(houses)

(children)

(rooms)

(problems)

(years)

To make definite form we ad -en. Like this:

husen
barnen
rummen
problemen
ren