Questions & Answers about Förstår du svårigheten?
How is the noun svårigheten built from another word?
It is built from the adjective svår, which means "difficult" or "hard". By adding the suffix -het, we turn it into the noun svårighet (difficulty).
How do we know to use -en at the end of svårigheten?
All nouns created with the -het suffix are reliably en-words. Because the sentence specifies "the difficulty" rather than "a difficulty", we add the standard -en ending to make it definite.
Does the verb förstår conjugate like the word står?
Yes! Just like "understand" in English, förstå is a compound word built on stå (to stand). Because of this, it follows the exact same irregular pattern as stå, which is why its present tense is förstår instead of taking a regular -ar or -er ending.
Why doesn't the sentence use a word for "do" at the beginning?
Swedish does not use a word like "do" as a helper verb to form questions. To ask a yes/no question, you simply invert the subject and the verb. Putting the main verb förstår at the very beginning of the sentence is all it takes to make it a question.
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