Breakdown of Är mötet den elfte eller den tolfte juni?
vara
to be
mötet
the meeting
eller
or
den
the (with en-words)
Questions & Answers about Är mötet den elfte eller den tolfte juni?
Where is the word for 'on'? In English we say 'on the eleventh'.
Swedish doesn't use a preposition like 'on' for specific calendar dates. You just jump straight into the date with den (the). So, 'on the eleventh of June' is simply den elfte juni.
Why do we use den before the numbers?
When giving a date, Swedish uses the independent definite article den (the) plus the ordinal number. It works just like English 'the eleventh', but notice that Swedish doesn't add a word for 'of' before the month.
How do the numbers 11 and 12 change to become ordinals?
The number 11 is elva and 12 is tolv. To make them ordinal (11th, 12th), we add the ending -te. Because it's hard to pronounce a 'v' right before a 't', the 'v' changes to an 'f', giving us elfte and tolfte.
Why isn't juni capitalized here?
Unlike English, Swedish does not capitalize the names of months or days of the week. They are always written in lowercase unless they start a sentence.
I remember möte means 'meeting'. Why does it end in -t here?