Unexpected complexity of Swedish pronouns, and escaping the resulting embarrassment

Raymond Chen

I dreamed that Swedish had separate third-person-plural pronouns based on gender. They were formed from han and hon by adding a common suffix, but the pattern broke down for det, and I got stuck trying to finish a sentence without knowing the correct word.

I was able to escape from this embarrassing situation by using a technique available only in dreams: I woke up.

Raymond Chen

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