Breakdown of Barnen har läxa i kväll och skriver om en fisk.
Questions & Answers about Barnen har läxa i kväll och skriver om en fisk.
Here har is a normal lexical verb meaning “have” in the sense of “have homework / have an assignment.”
Swedish uses har both:
- as a main verb:
- Jag har läxa. – I have homework.
- and as a perfect auxiliary:
- Jag har skrivit. – I have written.
In your sentence it is not a perfect tense. There is no past participle after it; instead it’s followed by the noun läxa, so it just means have (possess / be assigned).
Swedish treats läxa as a countable noun meaning roughly “homework assignment” or “piece of homework.”
- en läxa – one homework assignment
- flera läxor – several homework assignments
However, Swedish often uses the singular to talk about “having homework” in general:
- Jag har läxa. – I have homework (to do).
- Barnen har läxa i kväll. – The children have homework tonight.
You can say läxor in the plural, especially if you emphasize that there are several tasks:
- Barnen har många läxor i kväll. – The children have a lot of homework assignments tonight.
The standard, recommended spelling in modern Swedish is two words: i kväll.
You will see ikväll (one word) quite a lot informally, especially online or in text messages, but in formal writing and in dictionaries, the correct form is i kväll.
Semantically they mean the same: “this evening / tonight.”
Yes. Swedish word order is relatively flexible for time adverbials like i kväll. These are all acceptable, with slightly different emphasis:
- Barnen har läxa i kväll och skriver om en fisk.
– Neutral; “tonight” is said after “homework.” - I kväll har barnen läxa och skriver om en fisk.
– Emphasis on “tonight”; you’re foregrounding the time.
Whatever you do, in main clauses, the finite verb must stay in second position:
- I kväll har barnen läxa … ✅
- I kväll barnen har läxa … ❌ (verb not in second position)
Swedish very often uses the present tense + a time expression to talk about the future, especially for planned or scheduled events:
- Jag åker i morgon. – I am going / I leave tomorrow.
- Hon kommer på fredag. – She is coming on Friday.
So Barnen har läxa i kväll is naturally understood as “The children will have homework tonight” or “The children have homework tonight” (a planned fact).
You could also use a more “future-like” construction:
- Barnen ska ha läxa i kväll.
but the simple present with i kväll is completely normal.
Swedish normally does not need a special progressive form. The simple present covers both:
- Barnen skriver om en fisk.
– The children write about a fish.
– The children are writing about a fish.
Context decides whether it is a general habit or something happening right now / later.
You can form a kind of progressive if you really want to stress the ongoing nature of the action:
- Barnen håller på och skriver om en fisk. – The children are (in the middle of) writing about a fish.
But in most cases, plain skriver is enough.
The verb skriva with the preposition om has two common meanings, depending on context:
skriva om [något] = write about [something]
- Vi skriver om en fisk. – We are writing about a fish.
skriva om (without an explicit object, or with the thing being rewritten) = rewrite / write again
- Kan du skriva om texten? – Can you rewrite the text?
In your sentence, because it’s followed by en fisk (a new topic) and we know it’s homework, the natural interpretation is “write about a fish.”
No, not with the meaning “write about a fish.”
- skriver en fisk literally means “write a fish” – as if “a fish” were the text you are writing. It sounds wrong in this context.
To express writing about a topic you need skriva om + the topic:
- skriva om en fisk – write about a fish
- skriva om Sverige – write about Sweden
- skriva om sina drömmar – write about their dreams
Fisk is a common-gender noun that takes en in the singular indefinite:
- en fisk – a fish
- fisken – the fish
- fiskar – fishes / fish (plural)
- fiskarna – the fishes / the fish (plural definite)
In your sentence:
- en fisk = “a fish”, not a specific one we already know about.
The homework topic is just “a fish” in general.
If the children were all writing about the same known fish, you could say:
- Barnen skriver om fisken. – The children are writing about the fish.
If the topic was several fish:
- Barnen skriver om fiskar. – The children are writing about fish / fishes.
The noun barn is irregular:
- ett barn – a child
- barn – children (plural, no ending)
- barnet – the child
- barnen – the children
So the definite plural is barnen, and that’s what appears in the sentence:
- Barnen har läxa i kväll … – The children have homework tonight …
Barna exists dialectally and in some fixed expressions, but barnen is the standard written form.
No. In Swedish, verbs do not change depending on person or number.
The verb form is the same for I, you, he, she, it, we, they:
- jag har / du har / han har / vi har / de har – I/you/he/we/they have
- jag skriver / de skriver – I write / they write
So har and skriver are already the correct forms for barnen (the children). There is no separate singular vs. plural form like English has vs. have.
No. In Swedish, if two verbs share the same subject, you normally don’t repeat the subject after och:
- Barnen har läxa i kväll och skriver om en fisk. ✅
This is natural and preferred.
You could repeat the subject (or replace it with de – “they”) for emphasis or clarity, but it’s not necessary:
- Barnen har läxa i kväll, och de skriver om en fisk. – also correct, a bit more explicit.