Breakdown of På kvällen måste du städa huset.
du
you (singular)
huset
the house
städa
to clean
måste
to have to, must
Questions & Answers about På kvällen måste du städa huset.
Why is the word order måste du instead of du måste?
This is the famous V2 rule in action! In Swedish, the verb must be the second piece of information in a statement. Because we started this sentence with the time phrase På kvällen (In the evening), the verb måste has to come next. The subject du (you) gets pushed to the third position.
Could I start the sentence with Du instead?
Yes! You can say Du måste städa huset på kvällen. If you start with the subject Du, the verb måste is still in the second position, and the time phrase goes to the end. Putting På kvällen first just puts more emphasis on exactly when the cleaning needs to happen.
Why do we use städa here and not städar?
Måste (must) is a helper verb. Just like in English, whenever you use a helper verb in Swedish, the main verb that follows it must be in its base dictionary form (the infinitive). So we drop the present tense -r and use städa instead of städar.
How do we know huset means "the house" and not just "house"?
In Swedish, you do not use a separate word for "the". Instead, you add an ending to the noun. Because house is an "ett" word (ett hus = a house), we add -et directly to the end of the word to get huset (the house).