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Questions & Answers about Barnet kastar bollen.
This sentence has the exact same word order as English. Is that normal in Swedish?
Yes, when a Swedish sentence starts with the subject (Barnet), the word order is Subject-Verb-Object, just like in English. Because Swedish follows the V2 rule (the verb must be the second piece of information), starting with the subject naturally puts the verb (kastar) in the second position.
How do we know this sentence means "the child" and "the ball" instead of "a child" and "a ball"?
In Swedish, the word for "the" isn't a separate word before the noun. Instead, it is added as an ending to the noun itself. Barn means "child", and barnet means "the child". Similarly, boll means "ball", and bollen means "the ball".
Why does barnet end in "-et" but bollen ends in "-en"?
This is because Swedish has two noun groups: "en" words and "ett" words. Boll is an "en" word (en boll), so it takes the -en ending to mean "the ball". Barn is an "ett" word (ett barn), so it takes the -et ending to mean "the child".
If I wanted to say "The child is throwing the ball", would I need to add a word for "is"?
No, you don't need an extra word. Swedish doesn't have a separate "is doing" tense. The present tense verb kastar translates to both "throws" and "is throwing" in English.