Learn Hardcore Swedish: Ett av barnen får läxa varje dag, men hon gör läxan snabbt. - One of the children gets homework every day, but she does the homework quickly.

to get / receive
- Jag får läxa varje dag. = I get homework every day.
- Hon fick en bok. = She got a book.
may / be allowed to (similar to may / be allowed to)
- Får jag gå nu? = May I go now? / Am I allowed to go now?
- Du får inte röka här. = You may not smoke here.

In “Ett av barnen får läxa varje dag”, the context (homework, every day) clearly fits the “gets / receives” meaning, not permission.

Why is it “får läxa” without any article, and not “får en läxa”?

Both are grammatically possible, but they do not feel the same:

få läxa (no article) – idiomatic way to say “get homework” in general
- Ett av barnen får läxa varje dag.
  = One of the children gets homework every day.
få en läxa – get a (specific) assignment or a lesson (sometimes in the sense of “a telling-off / a moral lesson”)
- Han fick en läxa i matte. = He got a homework assignment in math.
- Hon fick en läxa för livet. = She got a life lesson.

In everyday school context, “få läxa” without an article is the most natural for homework in general.

Why does it change from “läxa” to “läxan” in the second clause?

Swedish uses the definite form when you talk about something that is already known or has just been introduced.

First mention: läxa (indefinite)
- Ett av barnen får läxa varje dag
  → We introduce the idea of “homework”.
Second mention: läxan (definite)
- …men hon gör läxan snabbt.
  → Now, “the homework” is already known (the one she gets).

This is the same pattern as in English:

“A child gets homework every day, and she does the homework quickly.”

So “läxan” = “the homework (that we just mentioned)”.

Why is the pronoun “hon” used after “ett av barnen”? Shouldn’t it be “det” because barn is neuter?

In Swedish:

Grammatical gender (en/ett) applies to nouns.
Personal pronouns (han/hon/den/det) usually follow natural gender for people.

So:

ett barn (neuter) – the word is neuter
But if we know the child is a girl, we refer to her as hon (she).
If we know it’s a boy, we say han.
det for people sounds impersonal or distancing, like “it”.

So in:

Ett av barnen får läxa varje dag, men hon gör läxan snabbt.

we understand that this particular child is a girl, so hon is natural.
Grammar: ett barn (neuter).
Pronoun for an actual person: hon or han (not det) when gender is known.

Why is it “snabbt” and not “snabb”?

Snabb is an adjective: fast / quick.
To describe how someone does something (an adverb: quickly), Swedish usually uses the -t form:

snabb (adjective: a quick boy – en snabb pojke)
snabbt (adverb: quickly – Hon gör läxan snabbt.)

In practice:

snabb – describes a noun
- en snabb bil – a fast car
snabbt – describes a verb / action
- Bilen kör snabbt. – The car drives fast.

So “hon gör läxan snabbt” = “she does the homework quickly.”

Is the word order “hon gör läxan snabbt” fixed, or can I say it in another way?

The neutral and most natural word order is:

Hon gör läxan snabbt.
(subject – verb – object – adverb)

Other possibilities:

Hon gör snabbt läxan. – also correct, but emphasizes snabbt a bit more.
Snabbt gör hon läxan. – possible, but sounds more marked / poetic / expressive.

What you cannot do is break main-clause word order by moving the verb away from second position in the clause, for example:

✗ Hon snabbt gör läxan. – feels wrong in standard Swedish.

So the given “hon gör läxan snabbt” is the default, natural order.

Could you say “får varje dag läxa” instead of “får läxa varje dag”?

Native speakers overwhelmingly prefer:

får läxa varje dag

because time adverbs like varje dag usually come after the object (läxa) in simple sentences.

Compare:

Hon dricker kaffe varje morgon. – She drinks coffee every morning.
(not hon dricker varje morgon kaffe in neutral speech)
Jag läser tidningen varje kväll. – I read the newspaper every evening.

“Får varje dag läxa” is not impossible but sounds marked / old-fashioned / poetic, not like everyday conversation.

Why is there a comma before “men”?

In Swedish, men is a coordinating conjunction meaning “but”. It starts a new main clause:

Ett av barnen får läxa varje dag, men hon gör läxan snabbt.
= Main clause 1, men, main clause 2.

It is normal and standard to put a comma before “men” when it joins two main clauses:

Jag vill gå ut, men det regnar.
Han är trött, men han fortsätter att jobba.

So the comma here is just regular main-clause punctuation.

How do the forms of “barn” work: barn, barnet, barnen?

Barn is an ett-word (neuter) and is irregular in that the plural is the same as the singular:

ett barn – a child
barn – child / children (indefinite; form is the same)
barnet – the child (definite singular)
barnen – the children (definite plural)

In the sentence:

barnen = the children (definite plural)
ett av barnen = one of the children

So the set is:

ett barn – barnet – barn – barnen
(a child – the child – children – the children)