Learn Swedish: Vi målar huset med en stor pensel. - We paint the house with a large paintbrush.

Just like in English, Swedish uses the preposition med (with) to show that you are using a tool or instrument to complete an action. Here, it tells us exactly what equipment we use to paint the house.

Why do we use stor here instead of stort or stora?

Adjectives in Swedish must agree with the noun they describe. Because pensel is a singular en-word, we use the base form stor. If the tool were an ett-word, it would be stort, and if it were plural, it would be stora.

If I want to emphasize the tool and start the sentence with Med en stor pensel, what happens to the word order?

Swedish uses the V2 rule, meaning the verb must stay in the second position. If you move the phrase Med en stor pensel to the front, the verb and subject swap places. The sentence becomes: Med en stor pensel målar vi huset.

Why is it huset but en stor pensel?

We are talking about a specific house, so we use the definite form huset (the house). However, we are just mentioning a general tool we used, so we use the indefinite article en with the base noun pensel (a paintbrush).