Breakdown of Hämtar flickan sitt paraply?
hämta
to fetch
flickan
the girl
sitt
his/her/its/their own (ett-word)
paraplyet
the umbrella
Questions & Answers about Hämtar flickan sitt paraply?
Why does the sentence use sitt instead of hennes for "her"?
Sitt is a reflexive possessive pronoun, which means the object belongs to the subject of the sentence (flickan). It translates to "her own". If we used hennes, it would mean the girl is fetching some other girl's umbrella!
Why do we use sitt here instead of sin or sina?
The reflexive pronoun has to match the gender and number of the thing being owned, not the owner. Because umbrella is an ett-word (ett paraply), we use the ett-word form, sitt. If she were fetching an en-word like a ball (en boll), it would be sin boll. For multiple umbrellas, it would be sina paraplyer.
There is no word for "does" in this sentence. How do we know it's a question?
English uses helper words like "does" or "do" to ask questions, but Swedish doesn't. Instead, you just swap the verb and the subject. The statement is Flickan hämtar (The girl fetches). By putting the verb first to make Hämtar flickan, it becomes a question: "Does the girl fetch?".
Why does the word for girl, flickan, end with an "n"?
Flickan means "the girl". In Swedish, you don't put a separate word for "the" in front of the noun. Instead, you add an ending. For an en-word ending in a vowel like en flicka (a girl), you just add -n to the end to make it definite (flickan).
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