{"id":6794,"date":"2014-11-03T13:02:49","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T13:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=6794"},"modified":"2018-08-09T17:12:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T17:12:41","slug":"swedish-grammar-general-and-specific-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-grammar-general-and-specific-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Grammar: General and specific “this”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nMmmmm!<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Hall\u00e5 mina v\u00e4nner!<\/strong> I had thought I was done with my series on demonstrative pronouns in Swedish, but I noticed a comment at the last minute with a great question that I decided deserved a full post.<\/p>\n

You might notice when listening to Swedish that when a person is presenting something new, they will use det h\u00e4r<\/em>, even if what they are presenting is of common gender (“n-gender”), in constructions such as this:<\/p>\n

Det h\u00e4r<\/em><\/span> \u00e4r en hund.<\/em> \u2212 This<\/span> is a dog.<\/p>\n

Det h\u00e4r<\/em> is the neuter gender (“t-gender”) form of den h\u00e4r<\/em>, which means “this”. (More about den h\u00e4r<\/em> here<\/a>!) But hund<\/em> is of common gender. Why in the world would it make sense to say det h\u00e4r<\/em> when referring to a word of common gender if det h\u00e4r<\/em> is a neuter gender declination?<\/p>\n

But that’s the thing: By the time you say\u00a0det h\u00e4r<\/em>, you still haven’t assigned the phenomenon dog<\/span> a noun. It is only when you say the actual word\u00a0hund<\/em> that the phenomenon\u00a0dog<\/span> acquires grammatical gender.<\/strong>\u00a0You say d<\/em>et h\u00e4r<\/em> because it is the default demonstrative pronoun for things (phenomena) that not yet been introduced into a conversation and have therefore not yet been assigned a grammatical gender.<\/p>\n

But let’s say your friend is describing a set of sculptures (skulptur<\/em>, common gender) to you. One of them looks like a dog (hund<\/em>, common gender). She describes this particular sculpture by saying this:<\/p>\n

Och den h\u00e4r skulpturen<\/span> \u00e4r en hund<\/em>. \u2013 And this sculpture<\/span> is a dog.<\/p>\n

But if it is already clear that she is talking about sculptures, she might decide to leave out the noun skulpturen<\/em> and say this:<\/p>\n

Och den h\u00e4r<\/span> \u00e4r en hund.<\/em> \u2013 And this (one)<\/span> is a dog.<\/p>\n

In this case, it would make sense to say den h\u00e4r<\/em> instead of det h\u00e4r<\/em>, because in the context, she is referring to one of the sculptures (skulptur<\/em>), which is of common gender.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your friend then shows you another sculpture. It is a sculpture of a house (hus<\/em>, neuter gender).<\/p>\n

Och den h\u00e4r<\/span> \u00e4r ett hus.<\/em> \u2013 And this (one)<\/span> is a house.<\/p>\n

Even though hus<\/em> is neuter, she says den h\u00e4r<\/em> because she is still referring to one of the sculptures (skulptur<\/em>, common gender).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Later on, you and your friend are walking along a street, discussing different types of trees (tr\u00e4d<\/em>, neuter gender). She stops and points at a particular tree.<\/p>\n

Och det h\u00e4r<\/span> \u00e4r en l\u00f6nn.<\/em> \u2013 And this (one)<\/span> is a maple.<\/p>\n

In this case, she uses det h\u00e4r<\/em> (neuter) because she is referring to one of the trees (tr\u00e4d<\/em>), which is also neuter. She could also have said det h\u00e4r tr\u00e4det<\/em> (“this tree”).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next to this tree, there is a house. You and your friend have not been talking about houses. Nonetheless, your friend wants to point out that what you see in front of you is, in fact, a house:<\/p>\n

Det h\u00e4r<\/span> \u00e4r ett hus.<\/em> \u2013 This<\/span> is a house.<\/p>\n

This time, she uses det h\u00e4r<\/em> (neuter) as a general pronoun because she is referring to something new (a real house) that has not been introduced to the conversation earlier. She is not using det h\u00e4r<\/em> to refer to the neuter gender word hus<\/em>, which has not yet been introduced into the conversation and thus has not yet been assigned grammatical gender.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While you are looking at the house, a dog comes running out the front door to the sidewalk where you are standing. It stops and sits on the ground in front of you. Your friend points to the dog and says:<\/p>\n

Det h\u00e4r<\/span> \u00e4r en hund.<\/em> \u2013 This<\/span> is a dog.<\/p>\n

Since she is introducing a new phenomenon (dog<\/span>) to the conversation, she uses the general det h\u00e4r<\/em> instead of den h\u00e4r<\/em> because the phenomenon dog<\/span> has not yet been assigned a grammatical gender in the conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roughly, if you are referring to something that is a member of a group, you start the sentence with the correct declination of den h\u00e4r<\/em> for the gender of the group noun (for example skulptur<\/em>) in the same way that, if you were to ask “Which sculpture?”, you would say:<\/p>\n

Vilken skulptur?<\/em> \u2013 Which sculpture?<\/p>\n

to which you would answer:<\/p>\n

Den h\u00e4r<\/span>!<\/em> \u2013 This (one)<\/span>!<\/p>\n

because the gender of skulptur<\/em> is common. If the actual word, which has a grammatical gender, has not been introduced to the conversation and is not part of a group for which you can ask “Which one?”, use det h\u00e4r<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I know, it’s a bit complicated, but just practice and you’ll get used to it in no time! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mmmmm! Hall\u00e5 mina v\u00e4nner! I had thought I was done with my series on demonstrative pronouns in Swedish, but I noticed a comment at the last minute with a great question that I decided deserved a full post. You might notice when listening to Swedish that when a person is presenting something new, they will…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6,3079],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6794","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-grammar","category-swedish-language"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6794"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8127,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794\/revisions\/8127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}