Word
Jag väntar på bussen.
Meaning
I am waiting for the bus.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
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Questions & Answers about Jag väntar på bussen.
Why is it just "väntar" and not something like "är väntar" for "am waiting"?
Swedish doesn't have a separate present continuous tense to say you "are doing" something right now. The simple present tense väntar covers both "wait" and "am waiting". Trying to say är väntar is a very common mistake for English speakers, but it is grammatically incorrect in Swedish.
Why do we use the preposition "på" here instead of "för"?
Prepositions rarely translate perfectly between languages. In Swedish, the verb väntar (wait) pairs with the preposition på (on) when you are waiting for something. You can think of it as "waiting on the bus". Using för here would sound unnatural.
How does the word "bussen" show that it means "the bus" and not just "a bus"?
In Swedish, the word for "the" isn't a separate word before the noun. Instead, it gets attached to the end. Since the base word buss is an en-word, you add -en to the end to get bussen (the bus).