Swedish plurals: the five patterns
How Swedish nouns form the plural. The five endings (or, ar, er, n, and nothing at all), which nouns take which, and the rules of thumb worth knowing.
English makes plurals with one ending: -s. Swedish spreads the work across five patterns, and which one a noun takes depends mostly on its gender and how it ends. That sounds like bad news. In practice a few rules of thumb cover most nouns you'll meet, and one of the five patterns is "add nothing at all".
The five patterns
Rules of thumb, in the order to try them
- En words ending in -a: drop the -a, add -or. En flicka becomes flickor, en lampa becomes lampor, en soffa becomes soffor. Very reliable.
- Most other en words: add -ar. Bilar, hundar (dogs), stolar (chairs), dagar (days). This is the biggest group.
- Some en words take -er instead, especially loanwords and words stressed on the last syllable: telefoner (telephones), familjer (families). And some short everyday words simply belong here too, like katter. When -ar is wrong, -er is usually the answer.
- Ett words ending in a vowel: add -n. Ett äpple becomes äpplen.
- Ett words ending in a consonant: add nothing. Ett hus, två hus. One house, two houses, same word. Also bord (tables) and barn (children).
The zero plural surprises English speakers, but you already do this with "one sheep, two sheep". Swedish just does it for a whole class of nouns: whether hus means house or houses, context tells you. En words ending in -are do it too: en lärare, två lärare (one teacher, two teachers).
A few very common nouns are irregular, exactly as in English. The one you'll meet first: en man, plural män (men).
The same habit as with en and ett
You learned to memorise en bil and ett hus with the article attached. When a plural surprises you, attach it too: en katt, katter. Dictionaries list the plural in every noun entry, and this platform's word popovers show it when you tap a noun. You do not need to sit down and memorise declension tables; you need to notice the plural each time a new noun matters to you.
(Plurals also have definite forms, "the cars", but one thing at a time. At this level, recognise them when you see them: bilarna means the cars.)
Hear the plurals
Five sentences with plurals from every pattern. The number words are två (two), tre (three), and fyra (four); numbers get their own article.
Swedish
Jag har två katter.
Vi har tre barn.
Två flickor äter äpplen.
Han har fyra bilar.
Vi har två stolar och ett bord.
English
I have two cats.
We have three children.
Two girls are eating apples.
He has four cars.
We have two chairs and a table.