The Focus of This Lesson is to Learn How to Express Ownership
Har du sett mitt pennskrin?
"Have you seen my pencil box?"

The purpose of this lesson is to learn how to express ownership. Expressing ownership can of course be done in many different ways. But in this lesson, we'll focus on how to use the pronouns min and mitt correctly. Both min and mitt were used by Anna in this lesson's dialog when expressing ownership. Let's have a look.

Examples from this dialogue:

1. Mamma, har du sett min biologibok?
   "Mom, have you seen my biology book?"
2. Har du sett mitt pennskrin?
   "Have you seen my pencil case?"

As you might have noticed from the sentences presented above, both the pronouns min and mitt correspond to the English pronoun "my." This leads us to the question: Why do we sometimes use min and sometimes mitt if they both correspond to "my"? The difference between min and mitt has to do with the noun that they are referring to. In Swedish, nouns are either common gender nouns or neuter gender nouns. Common gender nouns are sometimes referred to as en-nouns since the prefix en- precedes them.

Examples of en-nouns or common gender nouns are:

1. en biologibok
   "a biology book"
2. en mamma
   "a mom"
3. en hund
   "a dog"

Neuter gender nouns are, on the other hand, sometimes referred to as ett-nouns since the prefix ett precedes them.

Examples of ett-nouns or neuter gender nouns are:

1. ett pennskrin
   "a pencil case"
2. ett hus
   "a house"
3. ett barn
   "a child"

In Swedish there are, unfortunately, no rules for how to tell the common gender nouns and the neuter gender nouns apart. So a good thing to do is to always try to memorize the nouns that you learn as either an ett-noun or en-noun.

Now let's return to how to express ownership with the help of min and mitt. We'll use a simple sentence structure such as Det är min/mitt + [noun] ("It's my [noun]") to exemplify how to express ownership, depending on whether it's a common or neuter gender noun in its singular indefinite form you are actually referring to. We'll look at how to do that when we want to refer to common gender nouns (en-nouns) such as en biologibok ("a biology book"), en mamma ("a mom"), and en hund ("a dog"). Because we want to refer to common gender nouns (en-noun), we have to use the pronoun min. Let's look at some examples:

1. Det är min biologibok.
   "It's my biology book."
2. Det är min mamma.
   "It's my mom."
3. Det är min hund.
   "It's my dog."

Now, if we instead want to express ownership by referring to a neuter gender noun such as ett pennskrin ("a pencil case"), ett hus ("a house"), and ett barn ("a child"), you'll have to use the pronoun mitt ("my"). Let's illustrate this with some examples:

1. Det är mitt pennskrin.
   "It's my pencil case."
2. Det är mitt hus.
   "It's my house."
3. Det är mitt barn.
   "It's my child."

mamma ("mom")

The Swedish counterpart of the word "mom" is mamma. It's probably the most commonly used word for "mother"—much more common than the more old fashioned mor. Some people use the word morsan, which is probably the most casual way of saying "mother" in Swedish, but I would not recommend anyone to use this to your friend's mother, because some people think it sounds too informal or even rude.

att ligga ("to be")

In this lesson, the verb att ligga was used in a way that corresponds to the English verb "to be." It should, however, be mentioned that the verb att ligga is sometimes also are used in Swedish in a way that corresponds to the English verb "to be located." One example is in the sentences Affären ligger bredvid apoteket, meaning "The store is located beside the pharmacy."

i morse ("this morning")

The adverb i morse, meaning "this morning," is written here as two words i, literally meaning "in," and morse meaning "morning." However, it's not uncommon to see the two words spelled together as imorse, which can be confusing for people who have just started to learn Swedish. Both ways of writing are correct, and both still mean "this morning."

Education in Sweden

The Swedish education system consists of nine years of compulsory comprehensive school, or grundskola as it's referred to in Swedish. After grundskolan, you have the Swedish counterpart of high school, which in Swedish is known as gymnasieskola. There are a large variety of different programs offered to the students who start gymnasiet. These programs are both of a practical, as well as of a more theoretical nature, and while some will provide the students with an education that they can put into use directly after graduating, others are more designed to be a stepping stone to further studies at university. The education offered at Swedish high schools is voluntary, but most Swedish youth still attend. In fact, statistics show that as many as ninety percent start high school, but quite a few drop out or graduate with grades that are too poor to get accepted to universities or colleges.