Swedish:Adjectives

From WikiLang

Svenska Swedish
Family	Sub-family	Language of	Script
Indo-European	Northern Germanic	Sweden , Finland	Extended Latin

Introduction

Adjectives in Swedish have to agree in gender and number with the noun. Swedish adjectives are split into two sub-categories: Strong and weak. Strong adjectives are those that follow the indefinite article (En: a , Sv: en or ett). Weak adjectives follow the definite article, demonstratives, possessive adjectives or possessive nouns.

Swedish adjectives have three degrees of adjectives: normal, comparative and superlative.

We will use these following nouns in the examples below.

Hund (Dog) - Common Singular Noun
Hus (House) - Neuter Singular Noun
Hundar (Dogs) - Plural Noun

The following adjectives will be used too.

fin	fine	stor	big
röd	red	ond	evil
hel	whole	enkel	easy, simple
vacker	beautiful	avlägsen	distant

Strong Adjectives

The basic rule for strong adjectives is to add +t to the end of the adjective for neuter nouns and +a for plurals. No change for common nouns.

General Adjectives

fin
En fin hund	A fine dog
Ett fint hus	A fine house
Fina hundar	Fine dogs

stor
En stor hund	A big dog
Ett stort hus	A big house
Stora hundar	Big dogs

Ending in d

röd
En röd hund	A red dog
Ett rött hus	A red house
Röda hundar	Red dogs

ond
En ond hund	An evil dog
Ett ont hus	An evil house
Onda hundar	Evil dogs

Ending in el or er

Please note the letters that have been removed or swap place which are marked in the tables below in orange.

hel
En hel hund	A whole dog
Ett helt hus	A whole house
Hela hundar	Whole dogs

enkel
En enkel hund	An easy dog
Ett enkelt hus	An easy house
Enkla hundar	Easy dogs

vacker
En vacker hund	A beautiful dog
Ett vackert hus	A beautiful house
Vackra hundar	Beautiful dogs

Ending in en


En avlägsen hund	A distant dog
Ett avlägset hus	A distant house
Avlägsna hundar	Distant dogs

Weak Adjectives

For weak adjectives, you simply just add +a to the word following the same conventions as strong adjectives. However, when using definite articles either den, det or de need to be used.

Den fina hunden - The fine dog
Det fina huset - The fine house
De fina hundarna - The fine dogs

Comparative

The Swedish comparative is formed by adding -(a)re to the end of the adjective in most cases. It remains -(a)re regardless of gender or definiteness. To illustrate using the adjectives used throughout this page:

fin	finare	stor	större
röd	rödare	ond	ondare
hel	helare	enkel	enklare
vacker	vackrare	avlägsen	mer avlägsen
hög	högre	lång	längre

You will notice, some of the time, the word mer (more) is used instead of the -(a)re suffix. This normally occurs when the original adjective is longer than 2 syllables long. To use than after the adjective in Swedish, you use the preposition än.

Some examples using the comparative:

Examples:

Han kan springa mycket snabbare än jag
He can run much faster than me

Min brors rum luktar värre än våra två hundar
My brothers room smells worse than our two dogs.

snabb (fast) > snabbare (faster)
illa (bad) > värre (worse)

Do keep in mind, just like English, there will be times when forms are irregular. Consider: bad, worse, worst. Not bad, bader, badest.

Superlative

The Swedish superlative is formed by adding -ast(e) or -st(a) to the end of the adjective in most cases. It remains the same regardless of gender, but does change by definiteness. To illustrate using the adjectives used throughout this page:

fin	finast(e)	stor	störst(a)
röd	rödast(e)	ond	ondast(e)
hel	helaste	enkel	enklast(e)
vacker	vackrast(e)	avlägsen	mest avlägsen/mest avlägsna
hög	högst(a)	lång	längst(a)

You will notice, some of the time, the word mest (most) is used instead of one of the suffixes. This is like when we say in English "the most beautiful" instead of "beautifulest". This normally occurs when the original adjective is longer than 2 syllables long.

The final vowel (either -a or -e) as marked above, is the definite ending to be used with det or den. For example:
Examples:

Den är mest intressant
Det är högst.

Det är det mest intressanta
Den är den högsta

Some examples using the superlative: