Questions & Answers about Polisens hund är snabb.
Why is the word polisens and not just poliss?
Polis means "police officer" and polisen is the definite form, meaning "the police officer". To say "the police officer's", you take the definite form polisen and simply add an -s to the end, giving you polisens.
We are talking about a specific dog, so why is it hund instead of the definite form hunden?
This is a very strict rule in Swedish: whenever a noun comes directly after a possessive word (like polisens), it must be in the indefinite form. So you use hund, even though we say "the police officer's dog" in English.
Why doesn't the adjective snabb get an ending like -t or -a here?
The adjective describes hund, which is a singular en-word (en hund). For singular en-words, the adjective stays in its basic form. You would only add a -t if it described an ett-word, or an -a if it were plural.
Could polisens also mean "the police force's" instead of a single officer's?
Yes! In Swedish, polisen can mean "the police officer" or refer to "the police" as a whole organization. So this sentence could also be translated as "The police's dog is fast."