Breakdown of Vi har två olika konton på banken, ett till mig och ett till henne.
Questions & Answers about Vi har två olika konton på banken, ett till mig och ett till henne.
Swedish has two grammatical genders for nouns:
- en-words (common gender)
- ett-words (neuter gender)
The noun konto (account) is a neuter noun:
- ett konto = an account
- kontot = the account
When you say ett till mig, the noun konto is simply left out but still understood:
- ett (konto) till mig = one (account) for me
Because konto is an ett-word, the pronoun that stands for “one (account)” must also be ett, not en.
If the noun were an en-word, e.g. en bil (a car), you would say:
- en till mig = one (car) for me
Both till and för can be translated as for, but they’re used differently.
- till often means to or assigned to, belonging to someone.
- för is more about benefit, purpose or suitability.
In the context of bank accounts, you normally use till when an account is in someone’s name / allocated to someone:
- ett konto till mig = an account in my name / an account that is mine to use.
If you said ett konto för mig, it would sound more like:
- an account suitable for me,
- an account intended for my benefit (but not necessarily in my name),
which is not the usual way to express “one account for me, one for her” in Swedish.
So ett till mig and ett till henne is the natural idiomatic choice here.
Swedish personal pronouns change form depending on their grammatical role:
- hon = she (subject form)
- Hon har ett konto. = She has an account.
- henne = her (object form)
- Jag såg henne. = I saw her.
- hennes = her / hers (possessive form)
- Hennes konto = her account
In the sentence:
… ett till henne.
the pronoun is the indirect object (who the account is for), so you must use the object form henne, not the subject form hon and not the possessive hennes.
Literally it’s: one (account) to her → ett (konto) till henne.
Konto follows a common neuter pattern for plural formation:
- ett konto = an account (indefinite singular)
- kontot = the account (definite singular)
- konton = accounts (indefinite plural)
- kontona = the accounts (definite plural)
In the sentence we are talking about accounts in general, not the accounts, so the indefinite plural is correct:
- två olika konton = two different accounts
Kontona would mean the accounts, referring to specific accounts that are already known in the context:
- De där kontona är gamla. = Those accounts are old.
- två konton = two accounts
- två olika konton = two different accounts
The word olika means different and emphasizes that the accounts are not the same — for example, separate accounts in different names, or with different purposes.
If you drop olika:
Vi har två konton på banken.
This simply states the number of accounts, without stressing that they are distinct from each other in any particular way.
With olika, the nuance is closer to the English:
We have two different accounts at the bank.
Grammatically, note that olika has the same form for all genders and numbers; it doesn’t change for singular/plural or en-/ett-words.
Swedish often uses på with institutions, workplaces and some public places where English would use at:
- på banken = at the bank
- på jobbet = at work
- på sjukhuset = in hospital / at the hospital
- på universitetet = at the university
So på banken is the normal idiomatic way to say “at the bank”.
i banken would mean inside the bank building in a very literal, physical sense, and is much less common in this kind of sentence, which is about where the accounts are held, not where your body is located.
Swedish expresses definiteness mostly with endings:
- en bank = a bank (indefinite singular)
- banken = the bank (definite singular)
In this sentence:
på banken
means at the bank in the usual, institutional sense — typically the bank we use, or the bank as an institution. Swedish normally uses the definite form here.
You would use på en bank (at a bank) when the specific bank doesn’t matter, e.g.:
- Hon jobbar på en bank. = She works at a bank.
But when talking about where your accounts are, you normally mean the specific bank where you have them, so på banken is natural.
The comma marks off a kind of apposition / clarification:
Vi har två olika konton på banken, ett till mig och ett till henne.
We have two different accounts at the bank, one for me and one for her.
The part ett till mig och ett till henne explains what the two different accounts are.
In Swedish, it’s common (and recommended) to use a comma in this kind of structure, but it’s more about readability and rhythm than a strict rule. You might also see it written without the comma in informal text:
- Vi har två olika konton på banken – ett till mig och ett till henne.
- Vi har två olika konton på banken: ett till mig och ett till henne.
So the comma (or dash/colon) is very natural here but not “grammatically mandatory” in the same way as, for example, verb-second word order is.
The standard, most natural order is:
Vi har två olika konton på banken …
General tendencies:
- Subject (Vi) first
- Verb (har) second
- The main object or key information (två olika konton) follows
- Place phrase (på banken) usually comes after the object in a sentence like this
You can technically say:
- Vi har på banken två olika konton …
but it sounds marked, a bit awkward or poetic, and is not how people normally talk. It would put unusual emphasis on på banken.
So for normal speech and writing, keep:
Vi har två olika konton på banken, ett till mig och ett till henne.