En or ett: Swedish noun gender

Okay, so how do you say: "I'm speaking today"? And remember, to say "I am speaking" and to say "I speak", it's the same thing in Swedish. And to say "today", you would say: idag, idag.

Jag talar idag. "I speak today".

What about "are you speaking today"?

Once again, don't get too confused about the "are". Just like the "do", you don't need that word to help you. So, "are you speaking today" in Swedish?

Talar du idag?

Of course, the reason why it's like this is because the regular sentence, "you speak today", would be: du talar idag. And if you want to make it a question, all you do is switch the order. You don't put in "are" or "do" or any of these things that you see in English. So, what you say then is: talar du idag?

"Speak you today". And that's how you say it in Swedish.

What about "do you present today"? Presenterar du idag?

Okay, so how do you say: "Can you inform Adam"? Kan du informera Adam?

Kan du informera Adam? Exact same sentence structure as in English, and very similar words as well. "can" – kan; "you" – du.

"No, I cannot inform Adam". And to say "no", you would say: nej. Nej. So how would you say this?

Nej, jag kan inte informera Adam.

Okay, so let's quickly go through all of the pronouns, and the pronouns are the proxy nouns. Instead of saying a person's name over and over again, we tend to use shortcuts, and these shortcuts we call pronouns. So, for instance, if you're talking about your friend and your friend's name is Adam, you won't say, "I met Adam yesterday, and Adam and I were talking, and Adam said this thing." You don't keep repeating the same person's name.

Instead, you use a pronoun. So you say, "I met Adam, and he spoke to me." You use the "he". So let's go through the pronouns in Swedish. To say "I", you would say: jag "you": du Do you remember how to say "he", "she"?

han, hon What about "it"?

det or den "you" as in "you guys", "you" plural: ni "they": de "we": vi Very good.

Okay. So now we're going to look at yet another irregular verb, and this is going to be a very interesting verb. It's the verb "to be": att vara So, to be or not to be, right? To be.

To say that, "to be", in Swedish, you would say att vara. But of course when you change the verb, just like in English, it's irregular. In English you say "to be", but you say, "I am, he is." Okay. So to say "I am", you would say: jag är And of course now we know all of the remaining ones: du är, han är, hon är, den, det är, ni är, de är, that's "they are", vi är, "we are".

Okay, so how do you say, "I'm a student"? So the word "student" exists in Swedish, it's spelled the same, but it's pronounced in a Swedish way. And to say "a", here you have two variants, but for now let's focus on one of them. To say "a student" you would say en, en. So how do you say, "I'm a student"?

Jag är en student. And of course to say är, that means "I am", it also is the word you use for "is", right? Because in Swedish it's the same word, you don't change it.

Same with "are", like "they are", you'd say de är.

So it's easier in Swedish.

"He is a professor." And here, remember that the professor is the same in Swedish, but you have to pronounce it in a Swedish way. So how would you say that? "He is a professor." Han är en professor.

So here you can actually say, in both of the cases that we've looked at, you can actually say "He is professor", han är professor. You can say: jag är student, "I am student". So you don't actually need the "a" here in Swedish, you can remove it.

"She is a doctor." So doctor is the same in Swedish, it's spelled with a "k", but it's pronounced in a Swedish way. So how would you say that? "She is a doctor." Hon är en doktor, or hon är doktor.

What about it's a train? It is a train. Now, this is an interesting sentence. So, when you're using "a", like the indefinite "a", how would you say that in Swedish?

You would, of course, say en. Just like before we had: jag är en student, en professor, en doktor. However, unfortunately, Swedish is a lot more complex when it comes to this issue than English, because you have two different ways of saying "a".

You can say "a" as in en, and you can say "a" as in ett, ett. So, this is like a different gender. Some words, they take the en, like en student, en professor, whereas other words, they have the ett.

So, to say "a train", you would actually say ett tåg. Det är ett tåg. It is a train.

So, how do you say you are doctors? To say "doctors", you would say doktorer, so you're adding on "er", "er". So, how would you say you are doctors?

Ni är doktorer. If you said du är doktorer, that would be incorrect, because Swedish, obviously, differentiates between one person or many people when you're saying "you". So, ni är doktorer.

What about they are doctors?

De är doktorer. So, how would you then say we are students?

Vi är studenter. Exactly. You end it with e r, so vi är studenter.