Breakdown of Vi hyr inte bil i stan, eftersom bussen går ofta.
Gå is to move on your own legs — to walk. It is not the all-purpose English to go. Jag går till skolan means you walk the whole way there.
When a vehicle takes you, Swedish switches verb: åka if you are being carried (Jag åker buss till jobbet) and köra if you are the one driving (Jag kör bilen själv). Both come later in this course.
Gå also means to leave (Kom ihåg att låsa dörren när du går), and with timetables, machines and abstract things it means to run or to turn out: Bussen går om två minuter, Tiden går fort, Om allt går bra.
Questions & Answers about Vi hyr inte bil i stan, eftersom bussen går ofta.
Swedish often leaves out the indefinite article with vehicles when you talk about an activity in general:
- köra bil – to drive (a) car
- åka buss – to go by bus
- flyga plan – to fly (a) plane
- hyra bil – to rent a car (as an activity)
So Vi hyr inte bil i stan means roughly: We don’t (normally) rent a car in town / We don’t do car rental in town.
If you say Vi hyr inte en bil i stan, you put more focus on one particular car or one specific occasion:
We’re not renting a car (this time) in town.
Both are possible, but there is a nuance:
Vi hyr inte bil i stan.
– Negates the activity hyra bil.
– Sounds like a general habit or rule: We don’t (bother to) rent a car in town.Vi hyr ingen bil i stan.
– ingen bil = no car / not any car.
– Focus on the quantity: not a single car.
– Slightly more emphatic: We’re not renting any car at all in town.
In everyday speech, both can work in this sentence. The version with inte bil ties in a bit more with the idea of hyra bil as a general activity.