Breakdown of Vi tittar på huset och dess trädgård.
vi
we
och
and
huset
the house
titta på
to look at
trädgården
the garden
dess
its
Questions & Answers about Vi tittar på huset och dess trädgård.
Why do we use dess here to mean 'its'?
Dess means 'its'. We use it to show that the garden belongs to the house. While you would use hans for 'his' or hennes for 'hers' when talking about people, dess is used for things and animals. It works as the third person possessive word for both en words and ett words.
Why is the word for garden written as trädgård instead of the definite form trädgården?
In Swedish, whenever you use a possessive word like dess, min, or hans, the noun that follows must be in its basic, indefinite form. So even though we are talking about a specific garden, it is always dess trädgård, never dess trädgården.
Why do we need på after tittar?
The verb tittar means 'look' or 'watch'. When you want to say you are looking at a specific thing (like the house), you must add the preposition på. Together, tittar på translates to 'looking at'.
The English translation says 'are looking', but isn't tittar just the regular present tense?
Yes, it is! Swedish does not have a separate continuous tense for actions happening right now. The single verb form tittar translates to both 'look' and 'are looking', so vi tittar means 'we are looking' here based on the context of the sentence.
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