Questions & Answers about Jag kan tvätta bilen idag.
Why is it tvätta instead of the present tense tvättar?
Because it comes directly after the modal verb kan (can). Just like in English where we say I can wash and not I can washes, Swedish uses the bare infinitive form of the verb after a modal. In Swedish, infinitives usually end in an -a, so we use tvätta.
How does bilen mean the car?
In Swedish, the word for the isn't a separate word that goes before the noun. Instead, it gets attached to the end! Bil means a car, and because it is an en-word, we add -en to the end to make it bilen (the car).
I sometimes see today written as i dag. Is idag also correct?
Yes! Both idag (one word) and i dag (two words) mean today and are totally correct. It just comes down to personal preference, though idag is very common in everyday writing.
What happens to the word order if I start the sentence with idag?
Swedish has a strict verb-second rule, meaning the main verb must be the second piece of information in the sentence. If you start with idag, the verb kan has to come next, followed by the subject jag. So it becomes: Idag kan jag tvätta bilen.