Polisen läser polisanmälan.

Because Swedish usually puts the definite article on the end of the noun instead of using a separate word.

• en polis = a police officer
• polisen = the police officer

So polisen already includes the idea of the.

Grammatically, polisen is singular.

• en polis = a police officer
• poliser = police officers
• polisen = the police officer

But in real Swedish, polisen can also mean the police as an institution, depending on context. So learners often need context or a translation to know which meaning is intended.

läser is the present tense of läsa, which means to read.

A useful thing to know is that Swedish verbs do not change for person:

• jag läser = I read / I am reading
• du läser = you read / you are reading
• polisen läser = the police officer reads / is reading

So läser stays the same no matter who the subject is.

Because Swedish writes compound nouns as one word.

polisanmälan is made from:

• polis = police
• anmälan = report, notification, complaint

So the whole word means something like police report or report to the police.

This is very normal in Swedish. English often writes similar expressions as two words, but Swedish usually joins them.

Usually not. It more often means a report or complaint made to the police.

So even though English often translates it as police report, the Swedish word often refers to the act or document of reporting something to the police, not necessarily something authored by the police.

Because here the noun is most naturally understood as definite.

With this kind of noun, the spelling can be a little tricky:

• en polisanmälan = a police report
• polisanmälan = the police report

The head noun anmälan belongs to a group where the singular definite form looks the same in spelling as the basic noun form. So the absence of en is important.

For a learner, the safest rule here is:

• if you see en polisanmälan, think a police report
• if you see just polisanmälan in a normal sentence, think the police report

It is the normal Swedish main-clause order:

subject + verb + object

• Polisen = subject
• läser = verb
• polisanmälan = object

So this sentence is very straightforward.

If you turned it into a yes/no question, Swedish would normally put the verb first:

Läser polisen polisanmälan? = Is the police officer reading the police report? / Does the police officer read the police report?

A useful approximation is that ä sounds somewhat like the vowel in bed, but when it is long it can sound closer to the vowel in British there without the r. It is definitely not like English a in late.

A rough pronunciation guide for the whole sentence is:

po-LEE-sen LEH-ser po-LEE-s an-MEH-lan

That is only approximate, but it is a good starting point for an English speaker.