Appendix:Swedish adjectives

Swedish nouns comes in two genders, common gender and neuter gender. An adjective referring to a noun is inflected according to the noun's gender (both natural and grammatical), whether it is in definite form and whether it is in singular or plural.

On the positive side is the fact that (most) regularly inflected adjectives all follow the same scheme:

		Singular				Plural
		Indefinite form		Definite form
		Common	Neuter	Natural masculine	Other
Absolute		-	-t	-e	-a	-a
Comparative		-are
Superlative	Attribute			-aste	-aste /-sta	-aste /-sta
	Predicative	-ast /-st

The -a in -ast(e)/-are in the superlative and comparative is (mostly?) for ease of pronunciation, and vanish in some cases, e.g. hög (- högre - högst).

An example: (vacker = beautiful)

		Singular				Plural
		Indefinite form		Definite form
		Common	Neuter	Natural masculine	Other
Absolute		vacker	vackert	vackre	vackra	vackra
Comparative		vackrare
Superlative	Attribute			vackraste	vackraste	vackraste
	Predicative	vackrast

Some comments:

• If the adjective ends in -er, the e is removed if a suffix beginning with an vowel is added.
• Some issues occur concerning spelling: whether adjectives ending in -t adds an extra -t in neuter form, in some adjectives ending in -d that changes in neuter form to -tt; whether the attributive superlative gets the suffix -aste or -sta

• Participles of verbs function as adjectives. They generally ends in -ande or -ende (present participles) or -ad or -en (past participles). Present participles are comparated with "mer" and "mest", past participles are not comparable at all(?).

• Longer adjectives (more than ~3 syllables) create their comparatives and superlatives analogous to English; by using mer (=more) and mest (=most). The same is possible for short words too, but not as common.
  • Example: intressant (=interesting) comparative mer intressant, superlative mest intressant