When you first start learning Swedish, the whole noun gender thing might be confusing. In Spanish and French, the gender thing makes sense since ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ correspond to human gender. In Swedish, however, the genders are ‘common’ and ‘neuter’.

This does not mean Swedes aren’t male or female! 😉

Some nouns, as you may or may not have noticed, end in -(e)n and some end in -(e)t. Or you may have seen them in their indefinite form with en or ett before them. These characteristics determine which gender the noun has. En häst (a horse), for example, is of the common gender, and ett hus (a house) is of the neuter gender.

You might already be trying to figure out the logic behind why a horse is common gender and a house is neuter gender. You may have come to the conclusion that, ‘Oh, a horse is a living thing while a house is not’. Oh wait, that wouldn’t work, because ett bi (a bee) is also neuter but is a living thing. Or maybe you’re thinking that horse is more commonly found than—oh wait, both are quite common! Perhaps houses are even more commonly found than horses. (Although if you haven’t been to Sweden, you probably have no idea which is more common here.) Really there is no answer to this. Noun gender in Swedish has developed at random.

This is particularly evident in words such as äktenskap and vänskap. Considering that they both end in -skap, you might assume, since it works this way in other languages and in other instances, that both words are of the same gender. Well, unfortunately, Swedish likes to be tricky:

As you can see, even though they have similar characteristics, these two words are conjugated completely differently. So where’s the logic behind it all?

Check around the internet and in books, and they will all tell you the same thing: There simply is no logic to it whatsoever. So the best you can do is—no, not memorize it—learn it through application and practice. Start a blog in Swedish; write your diary in Swedish; try reading a Swedish book and translate everything you don’t know—as long as you make the language a part of your life, you won’t just remember it, but you’ll come to know it. And using this method to learn the gender of nouns is certainly no exception!