Image by user “geralt” at pixabay. License: CC0 Public Domain

Hallå hallå! It’s finally November! For folks in the States, this means Thanksgiving season has finally started after an October filled with anticipation for Halloween. In Sweden, November is just another month, usually cold and rainy. But Christmas is closer!

Today, let’s talk about ordinal numbers. “What’s that,” you wonder? Well, put simply, it’s the form of a number you use to put things in order. In English, the first five ordinal numbers are these: first, second, third, fourth, fifth (as apposed to one, two, three, four, five).

Swedish ordinal numbers are pretty easy to master, since you never have to decline them – i.e., you never have to change their form. So let’s get started! Here are the Swedish ordinal numbers from 1 to 20:

Not so hard, right? As you will notice, I’ve bolded sjätte (“sixth”) and sjunde (“seventh”). This is because people often get them confused, expecting “sixth” to be something like *sexte! So remember that “sixth” is sjätte and “seventh” is sjunde, or at least that sjätte is NOT sjunde.

So, what comes after tjugonde? Just as “twenty-one” becomes “twenty-first” in English, tjugo|ett becomes tjugo|första in Swedish. Similarly, tjugo|två becomes tjugo|andra, etc.

When it comes to saying “thirtieth”, “fortieth”, etc., the pattern follows tjugonde – just add -nde to the number! To say “thirty-first”, “forty-first”, etc, just follow the pattern for tjugo|första: trettio|första, fyrtio|första, etc.

I’ve bolded sjuttionde to point out that it looks an awful lot like sjuttonde (“seventeenth”). Make sure you pronounce (and write) the difference!

Finally, “hundredth” is hundrade (100:e).

I’m sure you’ll master these easily. Ha så kul!