Breakdown of Sommetider svømmer en dreng i søen.
en
a / an (common)
drengen
the boy
i
in
søen
the lake
svømme
to swim
sommetider
sometimes
Questions & Answers about Sommetider svømmer en dreng i søen.
Why is the verb svømmer before the subject en dreng? In English, we say 'Sometimes a boy swims'.
This is because of the V2 (verb-second) rule in Danish. Whenever you start a sentence with something other than the subject, like the time word sommetider, the verb must still be the second idea in the sentence. So, the verb svømmer comes right after sommetider, and the subject en dreng has to swap into the third spot.
If I want to start with the boy instead, how would the sentence look?
You would say en dreng svømmer i søen sommetider. Because the subject en dreng is now in the first spot, the verb svømmer naturally takes the second spot, and no special swapping is needed.
Why does the word for 'the lake' (søen) end in -en?
In Danish, the word for 'the' isn't usually a separate word placed before the noun. Instead, it gets attached to the end of the word. The noun en sø means 'a lake', and adding -en to the end makes it søen, which means 'the lake'.
Does the verb svømmer end in -r because it is a single boy swimming, like the 's' in the English word 'swims'?
It is actually much simpler than in English! Danish verbs do not change based on who is doing the action. The -er ending just tells us the action is happening right now in the present tense. It would still be svømmer even if it were 'I', 'you', or 'we' swimming.
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