Word
De starka pojkarna spelar fotboll.
Meaning
The strong boys play football.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of De starka pojkarna spelar fotboll.
spela
to play
fotboll
football
pojken
the boy
de
the (plural, before adjective)
Questions & Answers about De starka pojkarna spelar fotboll.
Why is it pojkarna (the boys) when we already have De (the) at the beginning?
Swedish uses a pattern called double definiteness when a definite noun has an adjective describing it. You must use the standalone plural article De (the) before the adjective, but you also keep the definite ending -na on the noun itself. Literally, it reads as "The strong the boys".
Why does the adjective stark (strong) change to starka here?
In Swedish, adjectives get an -a added to the end when they describe plural nouns, and also when they are in the definite form (after words like "the" or "my"). Since pojkarna is both plural and definite, the base word stark must become starka.
Is the word De pronounced the way it is spelled?
Usually, no. In everyday spoken Swedish, De is almost always pronounced as dom. This rule applies whether De means "they" as a pronoun, or "the" as a plural article like it does in this sentence.
How do we get the form pojkarna from the basic word pojke (boy)?