Breakdown of Det finns få restauranger som är billiga.
vara
to be
restaurangen
the restaurant
billig
cheap
det finns
there is, there are
som
who / which / that (relative pronoun)
få
few
Questions & Answers about Det finns få restauranger som är billiga.
Why do we use få here instead of lite?
Because restauranger (restaurants) are things you can count. We use få (few) for countable nouns. If you were talking about an uncountable noun, like food (mat), you would use lite (little).
Does det finns literally translate to 'it finds'?
Literally, yes, it comes from the passive form of 'to find' and means 'it is found'. However, it is just the standard Swedish phrase for both 'there is' and 'there are'. Notice that it doesn't change form even though we are talking about multiple restaurants.
Why does the adjective billiga have an -a at the end?
Adjectives in Swedish need to match the noun they describe. Because restauranger is plural, the base adjective billig (cheap) takes the plural ending -a to become billiga.
Could we skip the word som in this sentence, like we sometimes drop 'that' in English?
No, you must keep som here. In Swedish, you can only drop som if it is the object of the clause (for example, 'the restaurants that I like'). In this sentence, som represents the restaurants doing the action (being cheap), so it acts as the subject and cannot be left out.
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