Fingeravtrycket kan identifiera tjuven.

be able to

Breakdown of Fingeravtrycket kan identifiera tjuven.

• tjuven: the thief
• fingeravtrycket: the fingerprint
• identifiera: to identify

Questions & Answers about Fingeravtrycket kan identifiera tjuven.

Why is fingeravtryck written as one word?

Swedish normally writes compound nouns as a single word. Fingeravtryck is made from finger + avtryck, literally finger + print/impression.

This is very common in Swedish. Where English may use two words, Swedish often uses one:

• finger print → fingeravtryck
• school book → skolbok
• coffee cup → kaffekopp

Why does it say fingeravtrycket instead of using a separate word for the?

Because Swedish usually marks definiteness by adding an ending to the noun.

So:

• ett fingeravtryck = a fingerprint
• fingeravtrycket = the fingerprint

The ending -et is the definite ending for this noun.

Why is the ending -et used on fingeravtrycket?

Because fingeravtryck is an ett noun:

• ett fingeravtryck = a fingerprint

For many ett nouns, the definite singular ends in -et:

• ett hus → huset
• ett äpple → äpplet
• ett fingeravtryck → fingeravtrycket

So -et here means the.