Sorry Hannes, no new code yet. Instead I give you this brief explanation of Swedish grammar to confuse any non-swedish reader of this blog; if there are any. There is no apparent reason for this blog but as I finished the last book and was considering translating the title to English or not my mind took a small sidetrip comparing the Swedish language to the English language. Todays lesson will be about grammar, specifically third person pronouns and the use of the definite and the indefinite article in conjunction with these.
The gender specific third person pronouns he (han) or she (hon) are boringly straight forward but when we get to the third alternative; nouns of inderterminate gender it get’s more interesting or confusing depending on you outlook on life. For those who forgotten their basic grammar the third person singular pronoun of indeterminate gender is “it” (den, det). Did you see it? Huh, did you? Swedish has two third person pronouns of indeterminate gender. So how do you know which one to use? You don’t! Well, I’m lying, ’cause I know which one to use and I can hear when someone gets it wrong but I do not know the grammatical rule for when to use one or the other. If anyone knows then please post a comment explaining it. I think that most Swedes are unaware of the grammatical rule that states which one to use but almost all Swedes “knows” which one to use for a particular object. In fact it’s a common predjudice that foreigners or immigrants speaking Swedish often get this wrong.
Well I promised to confuse you with definite (the) and indefinite (a) articles as well. When we refer to an object as it we use “den” or “det” depending on the object. But when we refer to it as “the object” we put an ending on the word instead. Using definite article “the tree” becomes “trädet” and “the bush” becomes “busken“. And if we want to say “that tree” we say “det trädet” and for “that bush” it spells “den busken”. Do you see a pattern emerging? No? Ok, let’s move on to the indefinite article then. If I were to say “a tree” or “a bush” it would in Swedish become “ett träd” and “en buske“. So do you see the pattern now? You do? Great! 
So to recap; Swedes use two different pronouns of indeterminate gender for third person singular to replace the single english pronoun “it”. These are den or det. For words that are considered to be “den” we have add the indefinite article “en” before the word and without any inflection of the word. Instead we inflect the word with the ending “-en” when used as a definite article and when we want to speak of a particular instance we combine the basic pronoun with the definite inflection putting the pronoun in front; “den [x]-en“. We do the same with words that are of the “det” persuasion except that we use “ett [x]“, “[x]-et” and “det [x]-et” respectively. And we have know idea which rules determine whether an object is a den or a det. We go by sound, feeling and the ridicule of others should we get it wrong in order to determine which one to use. Simple, eh?
Shortly I’ll post a review of the book “Synden” - The Sin - which prompted the thoughts that led to this post.
I love the fact that I already speak swedish. Japanese grammar is pure joy in comparison.
Posted by Hannes on March 21st, 2007