Fatet har en tunn kant och en tjock botten.

Fat is the basic form, meaning a dish / platter.

Fatet is the definite singular form: the dish / the platter.

So:

• ett fat = a dish
• fatet = the dish

The ending -et is the normal definite ending for many ett-words.

Because Swedish normally does not use en/ett together with a bare definite noun.

You choose one or the other:

• ett fat = a dish
• fatet = the dish

So ett fatet is not correct.

A learner should know, though, that Swedish sometimes uses a separate definite word when there is an adjective:

• det stora fatet = the big dish

But in your sentence there is no adjective attached to fatet, so just fatet is correct.

Because kant and botten are both en-words (common gender nouns).

In Swedish, the indefinite article must match the noun’s gender:

• en kant
• en botten

So you get:

• en tunn kant
• en tjock botten

If a noun were an ett-word, you would use ett instead.

Because the adjectives are describing en-words.

In the indefinite singular, adjectives usually look like this:

• with an en-word: base form

  • en tunn kant
  • en tjock botten

• with an ett-word: usually add -t

  • ett tjockt lager
  • ett tunt fat

So here tunn and tjock are correct because they describe kant and botten, not fatet.

The -a form is usually used for:

• plural nouns
• definite noun phrases

Compare:

• en tunn kant = indefinite singular
• den tunna kanten = definite singular
• tunna kanter = plural

And:

• en tjock botten
• den tjocka bottnen/botten
• tjocka bottnar

So in your sentence, the phrases are indefinite singular, which is why you see tunn and tjock, not tunna and tjocka.

No. In botten, the -en is part of the word itself.

That can be confusing, because -en is also a common definite ending in Swedish. But here botten is just the normal dictionary form of the noun.

So in this sentence:

• en botten = a bottom
• botten by itself is not automatically definite just because it ends in -en

This is something you just have to learn word by word.

The sentence follows a very straightforward Swedish pattern:

Fatet | har | en tunn kant och en tjock botten
subject | verb | object/complement

So:

• Fatet = the subject
• har = the verb
• en tunn kant och en tjock botten = what the dish has

This is very similar to normal English word order:

The dish | has | a thin rim and a thick bottom

Because Swedish uses ha (to have) for possession and also for part-whole relationships.

So it is natural to say things like:

• Bilen har fyra hjul. = The car has four wheels.
• Huset har ett rött tak. = The house has a red roof.
• Fatet har en tunn kant. = The dish has a thin rim.

So har works just like English has here.

The hardest part is tj.

In many varieties of Swedish, tj is pronounced as a soft hissy sound that does not sound like English j in job. It is often approximated for learners as something like a very soft sh sound, though that is not a perfect match.

So tjock is roughly:

• not jock
• not chock
• closer to a soft shyock / hyock-type sound, depending on accent

Also:

• ck sounds like k
• the vowel is short

If you are a beginner, the most important thing is: don’t pronounce tj as an English j.

Then fatet would become ett fat:

• Ett fat har en tunn kant och en tjock botten.

That means A dish has a thin rim and a thick bottom.

So the contrast is:

• Fatet har ... = The dish has ...
• Ett fat har ... = A dish has ...

This is a very useful pattern to learn:

• ett fat → fatet
• en kant → kanten
• en botten → definite form depending on the noun’s pattern

So the sentence is a good example of how Swedish marks definiteness directly on the noun.