Nyår or Nytt År? How to talk about the holidays in Swedish

The holidays are coming up, so we thought a post about holiday grammar was in order. Swedish holiday vocabulary looks simple on the surface, jul (Christmas) and nyår (New Year), but the prepositions and articles behave differently from everyday nouns. Native speakers use them almost like time adverbs, which is why the usual grammar patterns don’t always apply.

Is it vid jul? i jul? över jul? på julafton? Actually, all of those are correct! But they mean different things.

Read on as we unwrap Swedish holiday grammar! For more on Swedish prepositions, check out unit 6 of the A2 Swedish course on Scriva!

Christmas

Holiday names are treated as fixed time points, which means they take the preposition på. In other words, we say:

• på julafton

• på juldagen

• på annandag jul

when referring to the specific day. Eg, Tomten kommer på julafton.

But there are loads of other ways to speak about or around the actual holiday, and these all take different prepositions. First let’s go through i jul. I jul is surprising because it is an unusual construction. Namely, it doesn’t really exist for any other holiday in standard Swedish. You won’t hear “i midsommar”. What does i jul mean? This Christmas period. For example, “hur blir vädret i jul?” or, “vad ska du göra i jul?”. Here i jul refers to the upcoming holiday period as a whole rather than a specific day.

While i jul is unusual in the context of holidays, it is actually completely natural in the context of time expressions. For example, you will also hear:

• i sommar (this summer)

• i år (this year)

Över jul and runt jul are somewhat similar to the above, but less time specific. Över jul and runt jul mean something akin to “around Christmastime”.

Lastly, till jul places Christmas as something of a deadline, and means “for Christmas”. For example:

• vi pyntar till jul = we are decorating for Christmas

• det ska vara klart till jul = it will be done for Christmas

New Year’s

Nyår is largely the same as jul, but with two quirks. 1) There is no i nyår like jul.

• på nyårsafton (on New Year’s eve)

• på nyårsdagen (on New Year’s day)

• vid/runt nyår (around New Year’s)

• över nyår (over New Year’s)

The second quirk - we say nyår instead of nytt år!

To be clear, when greeting others you say “gott nytt år!”, or the even more casual, “gott nytt!”. But the holiday is nyår, not nytt år. For those that have started to learn adjective congruence, this will seem strange. And the reason is quite simply that it is just a quirk of the language. Nyår was originally nytt år as you would expect, but over time became contracted to a single term, nyår. When these contractions happen in Swedish, the adjective typically gets shortened to a stem form, so agreement disappears. Here are some other examples:

• höghus (högt hus -> höghus): high-rise/tall building but not a skyscraper, which is skyskrapa

• kallvatten (kallt vatten -> kallvatten): cold water

• storspel (stort spel -> storspel): a great performance. Note that this is more idiomatic, it means when a player plays really well, not that the game itself was large in size.

• snabbspår (snabbt spår -> snabbspår): fast track

A bit of grammar to help navigate the holiday season. God Jul, Gott Nytt År, och God Fortsättning!

Why Swedish Has En and Ett Words

If you’ve started learning Swedish, you’ve already met one of the language’s most persistent little mystery: why are some nouns en words while others are ett words? Why is it en bok (a book) but ett hus (a house)? And more importantly, how are you supposed to remember which is which?

In this post, you’ll get a quick look at the history of Swedish grammatical gender and how the modern system functions. The good news: there’s some logic behind the system, even if it doesn’t always show itself right away. The bad news: you probably won’t find the logic super helpful. Mastering en and ett has far less to do with rigid rules than with exposure and pattern-building.

Start practicing in unit 2 of the Swedish A2 course on Scriva. Read on below, and then checkout frågelådan (the question box) if you want to dig deeper.

A Brief History: From Three Genders to Two

A thousand years ago, Old Norse had three grammatical genders:

• Masculine

• Feminine

• Neuter

This is similar to modern German (der, die, das) or Icelandic today. But over time, something interesting happened in Swedish: the masculine and feminine genders gradually merged. By the late Middle Ages, everyday spoken Swedish had reduced three genders down to two:

• Common gender (a merger of masculine + feminine)

• Neuter gender (the old neuter)

This is why modern Swedish uses two indefinite articles:

• en for common gender nouns

• ett for neuter nouns

So the en/ett distinction is a leftover from a much older and more complex system.

How the System Works Today

1. En-words are the majority

Roughly 75% of Swedish nouns are en-words. So if you have to guess, en is statistically safer.

Examples:

• en stol (a chair)

• en stad (a city)

• en idé (an idea)

2. Ett-words are fewer but highly common

Although fewer in number, many ett nouns are high-frequency words.

Examples:

• ett hus (a house)

• ett språk (a language)

• ett barn (a child)

3. Gender affects much more than the article

The gender impacts:

• The indefinite article (en/ett)

• The definite ending (-en or -et)

• Adjective endings (en stor bil vs ett stort hus)

This is why getting the gender right early pays off later.

Is There a Rule? Yes… and No.

There are some patterns that can help you guess if a word is an en-word or an ett-word. But in Swedish these are more like general guidelines rather than deterministic rules.

Pattern 1: Most living beings are en-words

• en man (a man)

• en kvinna (a woman)

• en hund (a dog)

• en lärare (a teacher)

Exceptions exist, but they’re rare (e.g., ett barn, ett djur).

Pattern 2: Most abstract nouns are en-words

Words for ideas, feelings, processes, and qualities:

• en tanke (a thought)

• en frihet (freedom)

• en kunskap (knowledge)

Pattern 3: Many short, concrete one-syllable nouns are ett-words

Especially one-syllable objects:

• ett hus

• ett bord

• ett glas

• ett rum

This isn’t perfect, but it’s reliable enough to help.

Learner tip:
If it’s a simple physical object and very short, guess ett.

Pattern 4: Words ending in specific suffixes are almost always en-words

This is one of the few strong rules. If a noun ends in these suffixes, it’s almost certainly en:

• -het (frihet – freedom)

• -tion (information)

• -else (rörelse - movement)

• -skap (vänskap – friendship)

• -are (lärare – teacher)

These are extremely consistent.

So How Should You Learn En vs Ett?

Don’t learn nouns alone. Learn them with their article. You’re not learning “hus”; you’re learning ett hus. You’re not learning “stad”; you’re learning en stad. If you treat gender like a small daily habit rather than a giant memorization challenge, you’ll get there faster than you think.