Word
De samlede puslespillet på tyve sekunder.
Meaning
They assembled the jigsaw puzzle in twenty seconds.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of De samlede puslespillet på tyve sekunder.
de
they
tyve
twenty
samle
to assemble / to gather, to collect
puslespillet
the jigsaw puzzle
Questions & Answers about De samlede puslespillet på tyve sekunder.
Why does this sentence use på for 'in' twenty seconds, instead of i?
In Danish, på is used with time to express how long it takes to complete a bounded action. If the action was ongoing without a specific end point (like just playing a game for twenty seconds), you would use i. Since assembling the puzzle has a clear finish line, på is the correct preposition to show completion.
Is the verb samlede related to the Danish word for 'together'?
Yes! Samlede is the past tense of samle, which means to assemble, gather, or collect. It shares a root with sammen (together), so when you assemble a puzzle, you are literally putting it together.
Why does the word for puzzle end with -et in this sentence?
Puslespil (jigsaw puzzle) is a compound word ending in spil (game). Because spil is a neuter noun (an et-word), the definite ending for 'the' is attached to the end as -et, creating puslespillet (the jigsaw puzzle).
If I wanted to emphasize the speed and start the sentence with På tyve sekunder, how would the word order change?
Because of the V2 rule, the verb must be the second structural element in a main clause. If you move the time phrase to the front, the verb samlede must come immediately after it, swapping places with the subject de. The new sentence would be: På tyve sekunder samlede de puslespillet.