You guys have surely wondered about these pronouns and when to use them. Now you should know by this time that approx. 80% of the Swedish nouns have “en” and 20% “ett” article. Sometimes you just want to spare some time and don´t want to repeat yourself. Think about it! How would it be if we would say Sarah all the time instead of saying “she”. Boring and confusing. For those kind of variations we have different pronouns such as Personal, Objective, Demonstarative and Determinative ones.

Personal function

1. I bought a car yesterday. It´s green.  Jag köpte en bil igår. Den är grön.

2. The Andersson family have built a house. It´s high.  Familjen Andersson har byggt ett hus. Det är högt.

3. I ate some cinemon buns yesterday. They were good. Jag åt några kanelbullar igår. De/Dom var goda.

(Note that there are two forms, it doesn´t matter which one you use just be consistent, I have to add though that the”De” form is still the most common, but younger generation writes dom instead of de)

Demonstarative function

Det bordet köper jag men inte den stolen. I buy that table but not that chair.

De fiskpinnarna är frysta. Vi ska tina dem. Those fishsticks are forzen. We will unfreeze them.

(Note that dem is the object in the sentence so it is the objective form of de, it is quite common that dem comes in the end of a sentence – this could be a trick to follow to remember. But of course there can be reversed sentences as well in Swedish when it comes to syntax so the best way to figure it out is to look for the subject in a sentence first and after you have found it you can look for the object. If the object happens to be de then the correct way to spell is dem. For instance: De ser dem. – They see them.