Sweden has just as many different types of writing utensils as any other country. And as in many languages (although certainly not all) there are different words for these different types of writing utensils. However, there is one main word used to refer to a writing utensil, and that is penna. Penna can mean either ‘pen’, ‘pencil’, or ‘marker’, to name a few, depending on the context.

If you are going to take a test and you’re told to use a ‘pencil’, then instead of saying blyertspenna in the following description of the test, the word is replaced with just penna. The same goes for bläckpenna, or what we know simply as ‘pen’—that is, an ink pen—if it is already understood that the speaker/writer means ‘pen’, then he or she may simply use the word penna in the following text. En markeringspenna is a ‘marker’, and this word can be used the same way.

In contrast to these scenarios, if there is no context, then you can assume that the speaker/writer means that you can use whatever type of writing utensil you will.

Here’s how you conjugate the word penna (here its translation will be simplified to ‘pen’):