Definite plural nouns in Swedish: bilarna

We have been looking at plurals. So we've said that en bil became bilar, cars. This is true for the indefinite form, the unknown form. But when you want to say the cars, and you want to talk about the known form, more commonly known as the definite form grammatically, it's when you know something, the cars, you're talking about specific cars.

So to say that in Swedish, well, it differs depending on if it's ett or en. So you have for instance bilar, that means cars. If you want to say the cars, you would have to say bilarna. And the r tends to sort of become a bit silent: bilarna. And you can say the same thing about worlds. So how would you say the worlds?

Världarna. So you have en värld, that's a world, and then världarna. Okay, so mobiler, that means phones or mobiles literally. So how would you say the mobiles?

Mobilerna. So this is true for the words that take on -en, so en bil, en värld, en mobil. However, if the words are ett-words, like ett barn, ett hem, ett tåg, then you need to add on e-n.

Barnen, that means the children. So how do you say the homes, if homes is hem?

Hemmen. And of course for these words the plural and the singular are the same, so ett hem is a home, two homes is två hem. Same thing with train. Tåg could be plural or singular. So if you want to say the known forms, the trains, how would you say that?

Tågen. So this is true if the word ends with a consonant, so not a vowel. So barn, it ends with n, hem, last letter is m, tåg, last letter is g. So in all of those cases you have a consonant and not a vowel. So tåg, then you have tågen.

There's a different case, but we're not going to talk about it because to be honest I went through the slides and every, I believe Every single word that starts with ett so far that we have looked at has not ended with a vowel. So seeing as it doesn't seem to be as prevalent, I don't think it's necessary to put a lot of energy into that at the moment. So let's focus on hemmen, tågen, barnen, and so forth.

Then, of course, just to make everything interesting, you always have the irregular case, just like you do in English, by the way. So if you look, for instance, in English, you have foot, and then you have feet for plural, right? The feet. In Swedish, foot is also irregular.

It's spelled fot, f-o-t, fot, that's how it's pronounced. The plural is fötter, fötter.

And then the known plural is fötterna. These irregular verbs, they tend to take on the -na in the end. So fötterna, the feet. Tand is also irregular in English, tooth. You don't say tooths with an s, you say teeth. So in Swedish you have tand, tänder.

Tänder is plural. And then tänderna for the known plural, when you're talking about the teeth. Just to give one more example, you have book, which is a very useful and common word. In Swedish that's bok, which is very useful word. To say many books, you would say böcker.

And how do you think you would say the books? Böckerna. Böckerna is the word, but when people speak what you'll hear is böckerna. So how do you say now in Swedish?

Nu. Do you remember how to say to read?

Att läsa. Att läsa. So to say have read, have you know how to say, har, and read is har läst, har läst. So how would you say: I have not read the books?

Jag har inte läst böckerna. böckerna. So, the books is böckerna.

To say many in Swedish, like how many, you would say många, många. So how do you then say: How many cars do you have?

To one person: How many cars do you have?

Hur många bilar har du? So, många. And hur of course is how. And if you forget about that, first you should try to think: Well, wait a minute, I know that the question words in Swedish, they tend to begin with the same letter as the ones in English.

So "how", it should begin with an H, just like we had "what". The W questions like "what" and "which", they started with a V instead: vad, vilka.

And if you're unsure you can also try to connect it to a phrase. So we do know the phrase: How are you? How do you say "how are you" to someone? Hur mår du? So because of this we can take the hur from "Hur mår du?". And every time we need "how", we can just remember that phrase.

So, hur många bilar har du? How many cars do you have?

The children are well.

So we have: ett barn. And then we have several, you also say: barn. And the children will be barnen.

Barnen. And here it's easy to say is. But we're not saying is or are, what we're saying is feel well, because that's what we say in Swedish. So, barnen mår bra. If you say: Barnen är bra, it sounds off.

So, in order to say they're well or they're feeling good, you would say: Mår bra, they feel well. What about: The money is finished now? And to say finished, you would say: Slut. Slut.

And of course money, we had that before. Do you remember how to say that? Pengar. So, see if you can say: The money is finished now. And finished is slut.

Pengarna är slut nu.