When you want to talk about a specific portion of a larger, defined group—such as "one of you" or "many of the cards"—Swedish uses a partitive construction.
This is formed simply by taking a quantity word, adding av (of), and following it with either an object pronoun (like oss, er, dem) or a definite plural noun.
| One of you must cut the deck before the card game begins. | En av er måste kupera kortleken innan kortspelet börjar. |
| That card game requires that one takes many of the tricks. | Det där kortspelet kräver att man tar många av sticken. |
Card Suits in the Definite
When discussing a game of cards (kortspelet), you will frequently refer to the four suits: spader (spades), hjärter (hearts), klöver (clubs), and ruter (diamonds). When talking about a specific suit played in a trick, Swedish treats them as singular en-words in their definite forms: spadern, hjärtern, klövern, and rutern.
You can seamlessly combine these with other partitive expressions, like ingen av (none of).
| Does none of you have the spade or the heart? | Har ingen av er spadern eller hjärtern? |
Matching Gender: En av vs. Ett av
When saying "one of," remember that the word for "one" must match the gender of the noun you are extracting it from. Use en av for en-words (and people), and ett av for ett-words.
In a deck of cards, a jack (en knekt) is an en-word, but an ace (ett ess) is an ett-word. Notice how both nouns take their definite plural forms in this construction:
| One of the aces and one of the jacks are missing. | Ett av essen och en av knektarna saknas. |
Other Quantity Words
You can build this construction with almost any quantity word. This includes numbers (två av), question words (vilket av), or indefinite pronouns like några av (some of).
| Some of the jokers are still lying in the box. | Några av jokrarna ligger kvar i lådan. |
| Which of the aces is most complicated to play? | Vilket av essen är mest komplicerat att spela? |
| One of them takes the trick with the diamond. | En av dem tar sticket med rutern. |