Breakdown of Har du semester i februari eller mars?
du
you (singular)
i
in
ha
to have
eller
or
semestern
the vacation
februari
February
mars
March
Questions & Answers about Har du semester i februari eller mars?
Why does the sentence use the word semester? Does it mean a school term?
In Swedish, semester is a false friend. It actually means vacation or holiday, usually from work. If you want to talk about a school semester, you would use the word termin.
Why aren't the months februari and mars capitalized?
Unlike in English, months, days of the week, and languages are not capitalized in Swedish. They are always written with lowercase letters unless they start a sentence.
Why does the sentence start with Har (have) instead of a helper word like do?
Swedish doesn't use a helper word like do to make questions. Instead, you simply swap the subject and the verb. So while You have is Du har, to ask Do you have? you just flip it to Har du.
The English translation says a vacation, but there is no word for a (en) in the Swedish sentence. Why?
In Swedish, when talking about having vacation in a general sense, you don't use the article en. You just say ha semester (have vacation), similar to how we say have time in English.
Is i always the right preposition to use before months?
Yes! When talking about something happening in a specific month, you use i followed by the month, just like in in English. For example, i februari means in February.
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